Jeremy Calder – University of Colorado (USA)

Interrogating the role of the cisgender listening subject in the study of queer and trans voices

J Calder is a Chicanx genderfluid individual, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Affiliate Faculty in the Departments of Anthropology, Ethnic Studies, and Women & Gender Studies. Their work straddles the fields of sociocultural linguistics and linguistic anthropology, using a combination of ethnography, sociophonetic methods, and semiotic theory to explore the performance and construction of marginalized identity in communities of queer/trans and BIPOC individuals. Their work has appeared in Language in Society, Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, and The Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality. They are currently preparing a monograph entitled Handsome Women: nonbinary language, gender, and embodied style in a San Francisco drag community.

Adriana Di Stefano – Università di Catania (ITA)

The Semiotics of Law and Gender: Unveiling Injustice in Human Rights Legal Discourses

Adriana Di Stefano is Associate Professor of European Union Law and International Law at the University of Catania. Her areas of interest include international human rights law; migration and refugee law; critical approaches to international law; socio-legal critiques of EU law; gender issues and transnational legal standards; legal spaces, territories and good neighbourliness in the Mediterranean area. She is Dean of the Class of Humanities and Social Sciences at the School of Advanced Studies (Scuola Superiore di Catania), co-founder of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies (GENUS, Department of Humanities) and Rector’s delegate for Equal Opportunities. She also serves as Director of the “Cohesion and Law” Legal Clinic Programme dealing with human rights and access to justice of marginalised and vulnerable groups. Adriana is an active member of the major Italian scientific International/EU law associations (SIDIUE, AISDUE) and  a Board’s member of the European Society of International Law. 

Busi Makoni – Penn State University (USA)

Metalinguistic discourses of styling the other: The discursive construction of liminal masculinities

Pietro Maturi – Università di Napoli Federico II (ITA)

Gender and Language in Italian: an ongoing struggle toward inclusivity

Pietro Maturi is associate professor for Italian linguistics at Naples Federico II University (dept. of Social sciences). He published articles and volumes in the areas of Italian sociolinguistics, dialectology, phonetics and Gender studies. He is or has been member of the boards of some of the major Italian linguistic associations. 

Tommaso M. Milani – University of Gotenborg (SWE)

Queer stasis

Tommaso M. Milani is a critical discourse analyst who is interested in the ways in which power imbalances are (re)produced and/or contested through semiotic means. His main research foci are: language ideologies, language policy and planning, linguistic landscape, as well as language, gender and sexuality. He has published extensively on these topics in international journals and edited volumes. Among his publications are the edited collection Language and Masculinities: Performances, Intersections and Dislocations (Routledge, 2016) and the special issue of the journal Linguistic Landscape on Gender, Sexuality and Linguistic Landscapes (2018). He is co-editor of the journal Language in Society.

Eva Nossem – Saarland University (D)

Queer Border Languaging

Eva Nossem is a graduate translator for German, English, and Italian. She is the scientific coordinator of the INTERREG V A project “UniGR-Center for Border Studies” at Saarland University (Germany) and the editor, together with Astrid Fellner, of the trilingual (DE, EN, FR) Border Glossary, a glossary of key terms in the field of border studies. She is an instructor in English linguistics at Saarland University. Currently, she is working on a project in Italian linguistics: “Un dizionario Queer – il lessico italiano della noneteronormatività” and on an edited collection entitled “Border Languaging: Multilingual Practices on the Border.” Both in her teaching and research, she aims at bringing together approaches from gender/queer studies, cultural studies, and linguistics, with a particular focus on lexicography, multilingualism, critical discourse studies, and sociolinguistics. She spent study and research periods in Italy and Hong Kong. Her research interests include Cultural and Linguistic Border Studies, Italian and English linguistics, Multilingualism, Gender and Queer Studies, and translation studies.