Jean-Yves Beziau

as Organizer of Events

Over the past 25 years, I have organized around 100 academic events across the world, in places as diverse as Easter Island, the Vatican, Paris, Beirut, Xi’an, Varanasi, Cairo, Sinaia, Lisbon, Cusco, Corsica, Rio de Janeiro, Costa Rica, Las Vegas, Crete, Montreux, etc. For me, organizing conferences is much more than arranging a program of lectures.

I believe that knowledge grows through encounters: meeting people, exchanging ideas, confronting different perspectives, and engaging in genuine conversation. Research and science are not solitary enterprises; they are, at their core, deeply social and human activities.

I also believe that intellectual life should remain connected to the reality and diversity of the world itself. It is easy to criticize a place on the basis of gossip, rumors, or fake news. But once you actually go there, meet people, and experience the place for yourself, you may completely change your mind. I have already traveled around the world three times, and these experiences have strongly shaped the way I see different countries and cultures. One result of this is my ongoing photographic project, Citizens of the World, which reflects this direct encounter with people and places across the globe.

This is one of the reasons I have deliberately organized events in such different cultural, geographical, and historical settings. Each place creates new encounters, new questions, and new ways of thinking. In that sense, these 100 events have not simply taken place around the world: the world itself has become part of the intellectual experience.  

This is also one of the reasons why I am opposed to online congresses, including hybrid ones. A congress should involve a genuine physical encounter between participants. The Internet can, of course, be very useful for webinars, but this is a completely different story. During the pandemic I launched two webinars series: The Logica Universalis Webinar (LUW)  in December 2020 and the Logic and Religion Webinar (LARAW) in June 2021 together with Ricardo Silvestre. 

Besides organizing isolated events, I have launched 8 series of events:

• 2005: UNILOG - World Congress and School on Universal Logic

• 2007: SQUARE - World Congress on the Square of Opposition

• 2011: LiQ - Logic in Question, with Jean-Pierre Desclés

• 2015: WoCoLoR - World Congress on Logic and Religion, with Ricardo Silvestre

• 2024: Salome - South American Logic Meeting, with Luis F. Bartolo Alegre

• 2024: LoChaMo - World Congress on Logic, Chance and Money, with Jasmin Özel and James Woodbridge

• 2024 PanafricaL - African Congress of Logic, With Mohamed Almisbkawy

• 2026: What is it! That's the Question! - Wonderful World Congress of Philosophy, with Miaou

Jean-Yves Beziau with Saul Kripke in Montreux at the 1st UNILOG in 2005