Online access to 10 year old book review granted

10 years after its publication, I have received online access to a book review of mine, namely "A stroll around the worlds of zoosemioticians and other animals", a review of Dario Martinelli´s book Zoosemiotics: Proposals for a handbook (2007) published in Semiotica.

Performance appraisal

Today I attended this year´s performance appraisal with my Head of department at Department of social studies - via Zoom.

A meeting and a last supervision session (BA)

Today I have attended the faculty leadership meeting at Faculty of social sciences, and had my fourth and last bachelor thesis supervision session with a student.

Writing day - phenomenology

Another writing day today, with some 700 words written on my phenomenology chapter for Semiotic agency.

MDPI

I do not publish in MDPI journals. A journal like Sustainability has some interesting papers published (and I once saw a thematically interesting call for papers to a special issue), but if you look at how many special issue calls they currently have (hundreds), it looks absurd. Check the online form for signaling interest in editing a special issue, and you see that they do not even require your CV (sending your CV is optional). And the editorial board counts about 1.500 people. Also, authors are invited to suggest who can peer-review their article. None of this is reassuring to me with regard to professional academic publishing.

Response from NOAH to my chronicle on Tiger King

Today Siri Martinsen, leader of the animal protection NGO "NOAH - for dyrs rettigheter", has a letter to the editor published in the Norwegian daily Vårt Land, titled "Illusjonen om dyrehagene", in response to my chronicle ""Tiger King" Joe Exotic: En ekte dyrevenn?".

To contribute to Open semiotics book with chapter "Umwelt theory for practitioners"

Today I have had half an article writing day, with some 200 words written. Accumulated number of writing days in 2020 is up to 31.

I wrote the summary reiterated below, which is the abstract for an invited book chapter for an anthology edited by Amir Biglari, Open Semiotics.

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"Umwelt theory for practitioners: Practical guidelines for a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology" 
By Morten Tønnessen 

Descriptive phenomenology denotes a scientific method for describing lived experience, based on phenomenological philosophy. But despite the fact that classics such as Husserl and Heidegger acknowledged the existence of animal lifeworlds, descriptive phenomenology in its current forms is typically only applicable to the study of human lifeworlds. Using the semiotically framed Umwelt theory of Jakob von Uexküll as foundation allows for the development of a novel version of descriptive phenomenology that is non-anthropocentric and pluralistic. In this chapter, I introduce practical guidelines for a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology which is applicable in the study of human as well as animal lifeworlds. Whereas prominent current forms of descriptive phenomenology rely heavily on the subject´s mastery of verbal interviews and/or written accounts, i.e. the mode of human language, a more-than-human descriptive phenomenology depends primarily on participatory observation of and interaction with the subjects under study, possibly supplemented by expert interviews. In the study of animals, applied Umwelt theory can be of use e.g. to veterinarians, ethologists, and zookeepers. It is also of use to any anthropologist or social scientist that studies humans who interact with animals. By providing a scientific method informed by both ethology and semiotics, it offers researchers an invaluable tool for qualitative studies of human and animal lifeworlds separately or in relation to each other.