2026-27

🔨Page under construction🔨

👇Scroll down to see abstracts for all talks.👇

👇Scroll down to see abstracts for all talks.👇

👇Scroll down to see abstracts for all talks.👇

ABSTRACTS

Kurt Sengul, Populism, gender discrimination, AI, and media discourse [subject to change]

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) enables the creation of synthetic text and imagery, and is increasingly exploited by the far right for antigender and male supremacist activism. This article examines how the current US Presidential administration, as a current example of a powerful far-right political organisation, uses AI-generated imagery to ridicule, sexualise, and dehumanise women and LGBTQIA+ people. A multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) of data from this contemporary case study reveals a gendered binary in far-right imagery. In this situation, political figures identifiable as men are constructed through hypermasculine warrior iconography that draws on popular culture references, while women politicians are depicted as emotionally unstable, incompetent, or responsible for existential threats to the nation. These representations exemplify what we term ‘synthetic misogyny’, representing the algorithmic manufacture of systemic, gendered degradation communicated through AI-generated content. This research contributes to scholarly understandings of how emerging technologies can reshape the dynamics of online hate, and further underscores a critical need for policy, scholarly, and platform-level responses to the gendered harms of new and emergent forms of synthetic, AI generated media.

Emma Putland, Generating bias? A case study of AI-generated text and images of dementia

The rapid uptake of generative AI (GenAI) in recent years has been attended by concern with its ethical, social and environmental implications. This includes GenAI's tendency to reproduce biases from the human data on which it is trained. I focus here on an under-reported area of bias, namely in AI-generated representations of dementia. I will draw on multimodal critical discourse analysis and present two specific case studies; firstly, 171 images generated using the text prompt ‘dementia’, and secondly, 52 character descriptions generated about characters specified as either having dementia or seeing someone with the condition (totalling 22,638 words). I demonstrate how these outputs can reproduce and amplify existing stereotypes and skewed discourses for dementia, including regarding age and a "living death" discourse. I use these case studies to reflect more broadly on the issue of bias in AI-generated outputs, and the role of critical discourse studies in responding to this.

Based on the following published articles:

Putland, E., Chikodzore-Paterson, C., Brookes, G. (2025). Artificial intelligence and visual discourse: a multimodal critical discourse analysis of AI-generated images of ‘Dementia’, Social Semiotics 35(2): 228-253. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2023.2290555

Putland, E., Chikodzore-Paterson, C. and Brookes, G. (2025). ‘We no longer recognized her as a human being’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of AI-generated character descriptions of men and women with dementia. Journal of Language and Discrimination [Special Issue] 9(2): 183-208. https://doi.org/10.3138/jld-2025-1002

Gretchen King, AI bias and the need for critical AI literacy: Lessons from collaborative research-based teaching in Lebanon and Palestine

Abstract to follow.

Nikhita Tuli, Postcolonial paradox of LGBTQ-inclusive corporate communications in India

In this talk I report on a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with LGBTQ individuals in India. I analyse how they perceive and interpret corporate messaging within the context of global influences and sociocultural complexities. The research reveals that LGBTQ-inclusive corporate communication in India is shaped by colonial legacies, global LGBTQ advocacy influences, and local cultural resistance. However, participants particularly critiqued corporate efforts as often superficial, primarily profit-oriented, and disconnected from meaningful structural change.

With these insights I advance proposals for more authentic and equitable communication strategies. Further, I develop some theoretical and methodological lessons for other postcolonial contexts, and for other contexts further afield.

Daniel Pillis, AI Theatre: multi-agent interaction for teaching conflict management skills

Recent advances in artificial intelligence through the development of widely available large language models have enabled highly realistic real-time interactions with virtual characters. In a recent research project, titled AI Theatre, we are exploring the potential of multi-agent interactions with users in a conversational user interface, designed to study how interactions with virtual characters can enhance a user’s real life interactions. The AI Theatre simulation is a pedagogical tool merging AI and theater to facilitate practice of interpersonal conflict resolution. Drawing inspiration from Augusto Boal's concept of theater as a catalyst for societal change, AI Theatre employs virtual agents and large language models to simulate lifelike conflict scenarios. Users engage with these agents, experimenting with various conflict resolution strategies within a secure and safe simulation environment. Results from a study involving 240 participants indicated that AI Theatre significantly enhanced confidence and self-efficacy in devising conflict solutions, showcasing its efficacy in teaching conflict management skills across social and professional contexts. Developing this project with students and faculty peers at Emerson will enable greater insight at the intersection of AI, theatre, and human-AI collaboration.

Claes Tängh Wrangel, Racialising the Resilient Brain: The Eugenic Underpinnings of US Military Neurobiological Discourse

This presentation analyses how the US military constructs dangerous Others through the language of neurobiology, with reference to the resilience and plasticity of human brains. To explore this, we conduct a Laclau and Mouffe inspired discourse analysis of the neurobiological research supported and disseminated by the US Department of War’s Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) programme. We focus on the racialised imaginary of the SMA programme, and we analyse how neurobiological research is enlisted to distinguish between populations on account of perceived brain differences. Violence in both the Global South and among ethnic minorities in the Global North is seen to emanate from these differences according to the SMA. Revealing the racialised underpinnings of this discourse, including its eugenic genealogy, this article challenges critical approaches invested in the emancipatory potentials of neurobiology with respect to race and racism, as well as violence and colonialism.

Virginia T. Dlamini-Akintola, Semiotic and cognitive landscapes: Construction of incarcerated young inmates’ identity

Correctional institutions have shifted their focus from strict punitive processes to those that prioritise the implementation of human rights through the rehabilitation of offenders to enhance inmates’ successful reintegration into communities. In this talk, I overview a case study attempting to strengthen young inmates’ formal and vocational education; and I problematise a predominant focus on academic and skills development, overlooking the key role of semiotic and cognitive landscapes in the construction of young offenders’ identities. Those identities powerfully influence offenders’ rehabilitation and reintegration success upon release, in addition to any formal qualifications.

Art-based research was used to highlight aspects of the semiotic landscapes that contribute to the young offenders’ discursive construction of identity, which is an important variable in the rehabilitation of incarcerated youth. I draw generalisable lessons from this case study for the wider field of youth justice, and application of linguistic knowledge for human wellbeing. In brief, the results show that semiotic and cognitive landscapes in this setting construct a range of young inmates’ identities which contribute to some success or failure of rehabilitation and reintegration processes, since this punitive environment creates and maintains tension between rehabilitation and retribution; this in turn affects the construction of young inmates ‘moral careers’ (Goffman 1961).

The purpose of this presentation therefore is to highlight the semiotic and cognitive landscapes constructed within the young inmates’ correctional facility from a sociolinguistic perspective. The data presented is drawn from a broader ethnographic study, on ‘The discursive construction of the young offenders’ identity through narratives’ (Dlamini-Akintola 2019) and continued interaction with the space up to 2023. In addition to the generalisable lessons mentioned, I point to avenues for future research and application in penal facilities and other youth services more broadly.

Marissa E Kwan Lin, Environmental conservation and urban development as competing stories of place and space in Singapore [subject to change]

Abstract to follow.