This year has been a special year for me in that I returned to a scientific position on Friday January 6th after 2 years as Head of department (after having been Vice-Dean of Research the 2 previous years, resulting in 4 years in academic leadership 2019-2023). For the first time in years, by Summer, I no longer held any leadership positions. In the course of the year I was replaced as steering group leader of Cognitive lab at University of Stavanger, and stepped down as President of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS), returning to the position as Secretary of NASS. An unhappy consequence of my resignation as Head of department was that my Scientific assistant Jan Karlstrøm´s position was terminated earlier than initially planned, but our collaboration on two scientific articles will continue until completion. In Spring, I had some time for academic updating, which in effect mostly amounted to getting to the bottom of my email inbox over the course of several weeks, and a visit to Oxford University.
At the Department of social studies, I have been involved with teaching in collaboration with Christian Wedler in a course on law and ethics in Spring, and Ex.phil. in the Autumn (all teaching by me, grading by me in collaboration with Rune Falch from University of Bergen). Both courses are part of the department´s bachelor in psychology. In the Autumn I also gave a couple of lectures in the university´s new course on sustainability and green transition, coordinated by Andra Riandita at the UIS Business School.
I have supervised Joakim Jiri Haaland in his ph.d. studies and co-supervised Jacob Tom in his, with Jacob going through with his midterm evaluation in September. I have had some extra research time for working on my book project Captured: CCS and the fight for the soul of the environmental movement, have taken part in the national editorial board of the new Stavanger-based festival on philosophy and science "Wonderful World", which was first held in June this year, and have hosted Lenart Škof, Professor of philosophy and religious studies at Alma Mater Europaea in Ljubljana, Slovenia, on an Erasmus exchange in December. Meanwhile, I took up the responsibility as guest editor, along with Carlo Brentari at University of Trento, for a special issue of Biosemiotics on the topic of "Umwelt theory and phenomenology", which will be published next Summer. I also co-wrote two consultative statements issued by Norway´s Council for animal ethics, and was in the Summer of 2023 reappointed as a member of the council for 4 more years.
In 2023, my paper "Existential universals: Biosemiosis and existential semiosis" was reprinted as a chapter in the anthology Transcending Signs – Essays in Existential Semiotics edited by Eero Tarasti and published by De Gruyter (Berlin). My article "The study of past Umwelten" was published in a special issue of Discipline Filosophische (Italy) edited by Vallori Rasini, and my chapter "Umwelt theory for practitioners: Semiotic guidelines for application in a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology" was published in the book set Open Semiotics, edited by Amir Biglari and published by L’Harmattan (Paris). My introductory chapter "Nosology and Semiotics" appeared in the book Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices, which was edited by Carlo Guido Musso & Adrian Covic and published by Springer Nature, and I co-authored the short communication "Biosemiotic Achievement Award for the Year 2022", published in Biosemiotics, with Ludmila Lackova & Ahti-Veikko Juhani Pietarinen. Finally, my article "Wasted GDP in the USA" was published in Humanities & Social Sciences Communications.
Among my personal achievements this year, I have given a scientific lecture for the UNDP´s Human Development Reports Office in March, seen my article "Wasted GDP in the USA" be mentioned in about 1500 tweets, and reached 1.000 citations by the count of Google Scholar. I further gave a keynote speech at the conference "Contemporary Umwelt Analysis: Applications for Culture and Ecological Relations" in Tartu, Estonia, in April - which also resulted in an extended interview with Martin Avila and me by Thorolf van Walsum - and was an invited speaker at the research colloquium «After Nagel: Science and the phenomenology of animals subjects” held in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in March, at the “Henrik Steffens – The Prophet of the Anthropocene?” conference held in Stavanger in September, and at Dyreetikkonferansen (the Norwegian animal ethics conference) 2023, held in Oslo in December. Also, an interview by Norway´s national broadcaster NRK with Erica von Essen and me on the ethics of wolf hunting was featured in NRK TV´s daily news program Dagsrevyen as well as the popular weekly comedy show Nytt på Nytt.
In 2023, I have engaged in new collaborations, which include commencing article work with my department colleague and legal scholar Maren Sagvaag Retland, with Thomas Hylland Eriksen, based at the University of Oslo, with Martin Drenthen at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and with Søren Nors Nielsen at Aalborg University, Denmark. Of larger research consortia, I am thankful to have been included in the astrobiology-themed book project Mars and the Earthlings, with initial contact made via David Dunér in Lund, Sweden, and in the "Live better" research consortium led by Kuba Krys, based at Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Poland. In the latter, I am currently gaining experience with international quantitative surveys.
I have done what I mention in this post within a work year that has been shorter than usual for me - around 2.500 work hours, compared with around 3,000 work hours in previous years. This has allowed me to basically have weekends and evenings off from academic work, making for a healthier balance in my life.
See also:
#35; 2023 totals (words written)
