Language is a complex adaptive system: Explorations and evidence

Kristine Lund currently leads the French 4.3M laboratory of excellence "Advanced Studies on Language Complexity". She is a CNRS Senior Research Engineer in the ICAR language sciences laboratory at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon. Her research is driven by her interest in diverse perspectives on collaboration and learning for individuals, groups, and communities. She studies argumentation and explanation as mechanisms for individual and collaborative knowledge construction focusing on socio-affective-cognitive conflicts, pragmatic competence, and embodied meaning-making. She holds a PhD in Cognitive Science and a Habilitation in Education, both from the University of Grenoble Alpes. She is an elected fellow of the International Society of the Learning Sciences.

Pierluigi Basso Fossali is full professor of Language Sciences at the Lyon 2 University. Currently he is director of the ICAR Laboratory at the ENS de Lyon, coordinator of the International Seminar of Semiotics in Paris, President of the French Association of Semiotics, and Vice President of Section 07-Language Sciences at the National Council of Universities (CNU). His research on the semiotics of cultures aims to articulate three epistemological approaches: (i) the study of the relations between linguistic mediations and perceptual experience, (ii) the analysis of the discursive strategies of texts, and (iii) the description of the practices of creation and interpretation of cultural objects in relation to specific institutions of meaning (domains). 

Audrey Mazur is a researcher at the University of Lyon, in the ASLAN laboratory of excellence and in the laboratory ICAR. She holds a PhD in psycholinguistics, is head of the Inreach and Outreach of ASLAN, and co-leader of the ICAR research team CogCinel. Her research focuses on written and spoken language development of children, adolescents and young adults with or without language impairment. Her projects implement a transdisciplinary perspective and include the diverse actors around a societal question. She has recently co-edited a book about cross-disciplinary perspectives of the multimodality of language and two special journal issues. The first focuses on dyslexia in adulthood, and the second on applied linguistics that respond to societal needs.

Magali Ollagnier-Beldame holds a PhD in Cognitive Science and joined the French National Centre for Scientific Research in 2012. Her work focuses on the emergence and the creation of ‘shared worlds’, especially in situations of interaction between two people. She leads a scientific program on intersubjectivity with a micro-phenomenological approach, using first-person interview epistemology and methodology. Main goals are better understanding intersubjectivity ‘from inside’ and exploring its deployment through affective, cognitive and sensory interactions. She is also a certified trainer in explicitation techniques (GREX - Research group in explicitation) and a counsellor in Focusing and Person-centred Approach (IFEF - Francophone European Focusing Institute).