Bio | Asli Ozyurek is the Director of the Multimodal Language Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and a Professor at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behavior, affiliated with Radboud University’s Center for Language Studies. She investigates the cognitive and social foundations of human language from a multimodal perspective, focusing on speech, gesture, and sign across languages. Her research bridges science, technology, society, and education, promoting inclusivity for diverse populations, including immigrants, women, and deaf individuals. Ozyurek holds several prestigious grants and is a member of Academia Europaea. She co-directs the Nijmegen Gesture Center and the Language Evolution and Emergence Group (LEE) at MPI. Institute Website | Google Scholar | Twitter (X)  

Keynote | "Are large multimodal corpora with rich annotations a pipe dream?"

Bio | Tuomo Hiippala is Professor of English Language and Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki, where he leads the Multimodality Research Group. His main interests include multimodal corpora and computational methods for data-driven research on multimodality. He currently directs a research project funded by the European Research Council (2024–2029), which seeks to renew theories of multimodality through empirical research University Website | Personal Website | Research Group|  Bluesky | GitHub |

Keynote | "The multimodal multiverse of museums: meanings, practices and wormholes"

Bio | Louise Ravelli is Professor of Communication in the School of Arts and Media at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, and Joint Chief Editor of the journal Visual Communication. She has a long-standing interest in multimodal communication, across language, image and the built environment, using social semiotics and multimodal discourse analysis. Books include Organizational Semiotics: Multimodal perspectives on organization studies (Routledge, 2023, with Theo van Leeuwen, Markus Hoellerer and Dennis Jancsary); Multimodality in the Built Environment: Spatial Discourse Analysis (Routledge, 2016, with Robert McMurtrie), and Museum Texts: Communication Frameworks (Routledge, 2006). Her current research focuses on multimodality and museum communication in the 21st century, with colleagues Jennifer Blunden, Sophia Diamantopoulou and Xiaoqin Wu. University Website | Google Scholar 

Keynote | "Augmenting human and machine argumentation"

Bio | Bart Verheij is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Argumentation at the University of Groningen, where he heads the Artificial Intelligence department in the Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics, Computer Science, and AI. His work focuses on the theoretical, computational, and empirical connections between knowledge, data, and reasoning, with an emphasis on responsible artificial intelligence. Drawing on argumentation perspectives from law and evidence, Verheij is also involved in the Multi-Agent Systems group and co-coordinates the 'Responsible Hybrid Intelligence' line in the NWO Zwaartekracht Hybrid Intelligence project. Personal Website | University Website | Google Scholar