Tyler holds a master’s degree in semiotics and a doctoral degree in philosophy, both from the University of Tartu, Estonia. His research interests include literary theory, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, cognitive, bio- and existential semiotics.
His current project at the Palacký University Department of General Linguistics is Digital Ideology Critique. It focuses upon the paradigm shift to life online, developing pragmatic instructions for how to maximize and prolong interactivity with new communication technologies, and theorizing online media as spaces of discourse and ideology construction. He is also a director of the International Semiotics Institute (ISI).
Tyler has been co-host and organizer of Semiosalong, the Afterhours Tartu Semiotic Salon, for seven years. He also operates a personal YouTube channel for general semiotics. He was instructor for the course Methodology for Semiotic Analysis at the University of Tartu for five years, before relocating to Olomouc. He has presented at twenty-four international conferences in eleven countries. His full academic profile can be found here.

Contact: tylerjames.bennett@upol.cz, linktr.ee/tylerjbennett

Degrees

Doctor of philosophy (semiotics and culture studies). Dissertation defended on March 1st, 2021 at the Institute of
Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Supervisors: Professor Kalevi Kull and Professor Andreas
Ventsel
Master of semiotics. Thesis defended on June 1st, 2012 at the Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu,
Estonia. Supervisor: Andreas Ventsel
Bachelor of liberal arts. Degree awarded on June 12th, 2009 at The Evergreen State College, USA

Awards and funding

2024-2026. Researcher. General Linguistics for the Digital Paradigm Shift (JG_2024_020,SPP: 4521JG041).
2023. Researcher. Innovation of Study Supports (Vzdělávání na UP 22+ edUP). Palacký University Olomouc.
2022-2023. Researcher. IGA Czech Ministry of Education, youth and sports for specific research (IGA_FF_2022_027).
Palacký University Olomouc.
2021. Team member. Aurora Alliance mini grants at Palacký University: Aurora Alliance Capacity Development Support
Programme (CDS).
2021-2023. Team Member. Humanities Going Digital (HUGOD) 2020-1-CZ01-KA226-HE-094363. Palacký University
Olomouc.
2019. Graduate student grant. Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS).
2018. Bursary award. International association for Cognitive Semiotics (IACS).
2018. The Jesper Hoffmeyer Award for Promising Young Scholars in Biosemiotics (ISBS).
2017. Semiotic Trace Award, Estonian Semiotic Society (Eesti Semiootika Selts).
2016. The Juri Lotman Fund scholarship. University of Tartu.
2012. Cum Laude, masters degree distinction. University of Tartu.
2011. ESF DoRa program, 9th partnership scholarship (30.1 - 6/886, 49). University of Tartu.

Publications

Monographs

2024 (forthcoming) Detotalization and Retroactivity for General Semiotics (Semiotics, Communication and Cognition).
Berlin, New York: De Gruyter Mouton.
2024 Semiosalong: The Afterhours Tartu Semiotic Salon. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
2021 Detotalization and retroactivity: black pyramid semiotics. Dissertation for the degree of doctor of philosophy. Tartu:
University of Tartu Press. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28140.49288
2012 Symptomatology of the panoptic surface: Foucault and the postmodern turn in semiotic modeling. Thesis for the
degree of master of semiotics. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.

Book chapters

2023 (forthcoming) Kristeva as semiotician today. Semiotization and Transubstantiation: Julia Kristeva for the 21st
Century. Sofia: New Bulgarian University Press, x–x.
2022 Kalevi Kull’s biosemiotic applecart. Tunne Loodust! Knowing Nature in the Languages of Biosemiotics. Favareau,
Donald and Velmezova, Ekaterina (eds.). Epistemologica et historiographica linguistica Lausannensia 4.
Lausanne, Moscow: Faculté des lettres, Unil, 53–56.
2021 Incompatibility, unlimited semiosis, aesthetic function. In: Sütiste, Elin; Gramigna, Remo; Griffin, Jonathan;
Salupere, Silvi (eds.), (Re)considering Jakobson. (Tartu Semiotics Library 23). Tartu: University of Tartu Press,
149–163.
2017 On the semiotic concept of ground. In: Bennett, Tyler James; Higuera, Claudio Julio Rodríguez (eds.), Concepts for
Semiotics (Tartu Semiotics Library 16). Tartu: University of Tartu Press, 213–233.
2014 Semiotic propedeutics for logic and cognition. In: Torkild Thellefsen, Bent Sorensen (eds.), Charles Sanders Peirce
in his Own Words: 100 Years of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 259–262.
Refereed publications
2022 Funktionskreis and the biosemiotic signifieds. With Kull, Kalevi; Lacková, Ludmila; Miyamoto, Oscar; Chávez,
Israel. Sign Systems Studies 50(2/3). DOI: 10.12697/SSS.2022.50.2-3.07
2022 Biosemiotic aesthetics may unify general semiotics. Biosemiotics 15 (23–26). DOI: 10.1007/s12304-022-09483-x
2021 Second generation semiology and detotalization. Linguistic Frontiers 4(1): 45–53. De Gruyter Open, Sciendo. DOI:
10.2478/lf-2021-0010
2015 The semiotic life cycle and The Symbolic Species. Sign Systems Studies 43(4): 446–462. DOI:
10.12697/SSS.2015.43.4.05
2014 Biosemiotics and bioluminescence. Chinese Semiotic Studies 10(4): 605–615. DOI: 10.1515/css-2014-0053
Edited volumes
2024 (forthcoming) Proceedings of the International Semiotic Summer School in Prague. Prague: Karolinum Press.
2016 Tartu Semiotics Library 16: Concepts for Semiotics. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, with Claudio Julio Rodríguez
Higuera. ISBN: 978-9949-77-258-2
2012 Tartu Semiotics Library 11: Gatherings in Biosemiotics. Tartu: University of Tartu Press, with Silver Rattasepp.
ISBN: 978-9949-32-048-6

Invited lectures

2023. December 13th. Critical digital humanities and the Cybersemiotic Culture Research Unit. Annual ISI Director
Winter Address. SO MANY INSIGHTS OF SEMIOTICS AND PHILOSOPHY ON CULTURE & ARTS
TODAY…Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia.
2023. December 12th. The general semiotics module and “Slovenská semiotická skupina”. Annual ISI Director Winter
Address. SO MANY INSIGHTS OF SEMIOTICS AND PHILOSOPHY ON CULTURE & ARTS TODAY…
Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra, Slovakia.
2022. December 2nd. Existential origins of the quasi-signs. Abbual ISI Director Winter Address. Oscar Day, The Finnish
Society for Semiotics. Helsinki, Finland.
2022 August 9th. The limits of the local: the problem of presence for defining interactivity in general semiotics. Invited
plenary speaker for the Czech Summer School of Semiotics, hosted by the Program for Electronic Culture and Semiotics,
Charles University in Prague.
2022 March 3rd. Russian formalism and the Prague School. Invited speaker for the course Tartu-Moscow School,
at the University of Tartu Department of Semiotics.
2021. October 22nd. Proteins as minimal agents for modeling AI. Invited speaker at the 10th Peripatetic Conference on
Cognitive Systems Modeling. Zakopane, Poland.

International conference presentations

35 international conference presentations in 14 countries:
2022. December 2nd. Existential origins of the quasi-signs. Oscar Day, The Finnish Society for
Semiotics. Helsinki, Finland.
2022. September 8th. The Social Media Arm of the International Semiotics Institute in Olomouc, CZ.
HUGOD Transnational Meeting. University of Pécs, Hungary.
2022. September 3rd. Formal ideology critique: chiasmus and the Peirce-Hjelmslev hybrid. The 15th World
Congress of Semiotics. Semiotics in the Lifeworld. Thessaloniki, Greece.
2022. August 9th. The limits of the local: the problem of presence for defining interactivity in general semiotics. Czech
Summer School of Semiotics. Broumov, Czech Republic.
2022. July 1st. Machine semiosis and the quasi-signs. Gatherings in Biosemiotics 22. Olomouc, Czech
Republic.
2022. May 22nd. Kristeva as semiotician today. Semiotization and Transubstantiation: Julia Kristeva for the 21st
Century. Sofia, Bulgaria.
2022 March 3rd. Russian formalism and the Prague School. Invited speaker for the course Tartu-Moscow School.
University of Tartu, Estonia.
2022. February 26 th . The die-casting mechanism (Штампующий устройство) is not the semiosphere. Juri Lotman’s
Semiosphere. Tallinn and Tartu, Estonia.
2022. February 18 th. Semiosalong: overview and future developments. HUGOD: Humanities Going Digital. Olomouc,
Czech Republic.
2021. October 22nd. Proteins as minimal agents for modeling AI. 10th Peripatetic Conference on Cognitive Systems
Modeling. Zakopane, Poland.
2021. September 8th. Implications of the Peirce-Hjelmslev Hybrid for a Formalist Communicology. Eco-communicology
and World-View Crisis. Powsin-Warsaw, Poland.
2021 September 6th. Hybrid detotalization in the YouTube space. XXV Early Fall School of Semiotics. Sozopol, Bulgaria.
2021 July 26th. The Quasi-Sign Doctrine. Gatherings in Biosemiotics 21. Stockholm, Sweden.
2020 November 29th. Taxonomy, composition, and the Peirce-Hjelmslev hybrid. Gatherings in Biosemiotics 20. Palacký
University Olomouc, Czech Republic.
2019 October 30th. The sense in which semiotics remains a part of linguistics. Evolution of Human Capacities to Know
and to Act or, How to Convert Knowledge into Power? National Research University, Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russian Federation.
2019 August 18th.Peirce for subject-critical theory. Tartu Summer School. Semiotic Dimensions of Spaces & Literacies.
University of Tartu, Estonia.
2019 July 3rd. Cultural implications of protosigns: biosemiotics and structural semiology. Gatherings in Biosemiotics 19.
Lomonosov Moscow State University Moscow, Russian Federation.
2019 January 29th. Anti-humanist semiotics and the role of the humanities. 8th Winter School of the Estonian Graduate
School of Culture Studies and Arts. The Humanities and Posthumanities: New Ways of Being Human. Tallinn University,
Estonia.
2018 July 14th. Multimodal contradiction as index of the semiotic real. The Third Conference of the International
Association for Cognitive Semiotics. Reyerson University Toronto, Canada.
2018 June 18th. Terrence Deacon’s cognitive penumbra and Charles Peirce’s late classification of signs. Gatherings in
Biosemiotics 18. The University of California at Berkeley’s International House, USA.
2017 June 27th. Schematic intersection of post-structuralism and cognitive semiotics. The 13th World Congress of
Semiotics. Cross-Inter-Multi-Trans. Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania.
2017 August 15th. Habitual overgeneralizations: ideology as semiotic closure. Tartu Summer School of Semiotics.
Generalizing Gently. University of Tartu, Estonia.
2016 July 8th.Dark Romance: Necrosemiotic axiology and the semiotic life cycle. Gatherings in Biosemiotics 18. Charles
University, Czech Republic.
2015 August 19th. The debatable necessity of unpredictability in Peirce’s semiotic. Tartu Summer School of Semiotics. On
Semiotic (Un)predictability. University of Tartu,, Estonia.
2015 July 1st. Disambiguating degeneracy in Peirce’s semiotics. Gatherings in Biosemiotics 15. Aalborg University
Copenhagen, Denmark.
2015 June 11th. The status of degenerate signs in the application of Peirce. Towards a Science of Consciousness. Against
Mindless Pragmatism: A Symposium on Consciousness and C.S. Peirce’s Semiotics. University of Helsinki, Finland.
2014 December 6th. Towards defining the mechanism of creativity: Peirce’s abduction with Lotman’s incompatibility.
Creative Continuity: 50 Years of Signs Systems Studies. University of Tartu, Estonia.
2014 September 17th. Art is always subversive. Reading rhetoric with Juri Lotman. 12th World Congress of Semiotics.
Between Tradition and Innovation. New Bulgarian University Sofia, Bulgaria.
2014 May 1st. Semiotics for the problem of concepts in framing nature. Framing Nature: Signs, Stories and Ecologies of
Meaning. University of Tartu, Estonia.
2014 April 21st. Peirce and the empirical analysis of signs. Applying Peirce 2: The Second International Conference on
Peirce’s Thought and its Applications. Tallinn Technical University, Estonia.
2012 December 18th.Counterillumination as semiotic process. Non-humans in Social Science. Charles University Prague,
Czech Republic.
2012 March 2nd. Juri Lotman and the aesthetics of reflexive modeling. Cultural Polyglotism: From Intertextuality to
Cross-mediality. Dedicated to Juri Lotman’s 90th Anniversary. Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia.
2011 August 25th. Semiosphere as model for unpredictable text generation. Tartu Summer School of Semiotics. Semiotic
Modelling. University of Tartu, convened in Palmse, Estonia.

Teaching

2024–present Assistant Professor, Experimental Semiotics, Palacký University Olomouc
2022–present Assistant Professor, Semiotics, Palacký University Olomouc
2022–present Assistant Professor, Psycholinguistics, Palacký University Olomouc
2022–present Assistant Professor, Applied Semiotics, Palacký University Olomouc
2021–present Assistant Professor, Semiotic Evenings 2, Palacký University Olomouc
2021–present Assistant Professor, Semiotic Evenings, Palacký University Olomouc
2016 Adjunct instructor, Semiotics of Literature, University of Tartu 
2015–2017 Adjunct instructor, Methodology of Semiotic Analysis, University of Tartu
2014 Adjunct instructor, Semiotics of Art, University of Tartu 
2007–2009 Teaching assistant. The Evergreen State College

As a supervisor of student theses

2023 Kivanç Gördü. BA thesis: “The autonomy of the symbolic: cognitive semiotics for ideology
critique”. Department of General Linguistics, Palacký University Olomouc. Status: in process.
2019 Jorge Luis Flores Hernández. MA thesis: “Subversive narrative strategies in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666”.
Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Status: defended.
2018 Anastasiia Bobrova. MA thesis: “Representation of gender in Ukrainian online media”. Department of Semiotics,
University of Tartu, Estonia. Status: defended.
2016 Daria Arkhipova. MA thesis: “Some principles of art critique elaborated from the works of Juri Lotman”.
Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Status: defended
2015 Dimitrios Chatzicharalampous. MA thesis: “(Counter-) cultural mechanism of terrorism: the case study of Red
Army Faction in West Germany during 1970–1977”. Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Status:
defended.
As an opponent for student theses
2022 Zdeněk Joukl. “Evidence pro pravidelný výskyt nízkofrekvenčních položek a její důsledky pro modely mentálního
lexikonu.” Department of General Linguistics, Palacký University Olomouc. Status: defended.
2020 Murat Can Yüksel. “Self in „Voyage au bout de la Nuit“ by Louis-Ferdinand Céline”. Department of Semiotics,
University of Tartu, Estonia. Status: defended.
2017 Herman Tamminen “Semeioneiron – on the similitude of dream and symbol in the cultural system”. Department of
Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Status: defended.
2015 Marcus Antonia de Lyra Alves “Signs in time: the hypothesis of social time for a cultural semiotic analysis”.
Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Status: defended.
2014 Ville-Matti Aleksi Kataja. “Signification-switch in the context of The Passion of Joan of Arc film”. Department of
Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Status: defended
2013 Ana Koncul. “Towards a semiotization of radical alterity: the endeavor of transhumanism in becoming
posthumanist”. Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. Status: defended.

Editorial, organizing and online curating activities

2023 Organizer for The International Semiotic Summer School in Prague at Charles University.
2022-present Director of the International Semiotics Institute.
2022-present Language editor for Linguistic Frontiers.
2022 Organizer for Gatherings in Biosemiotics 22 at Palacký University, Olomouc.
2021 Frequent reviewer for the journal Biosemiotics
2019 Organizer with Donna E. West, of the symposium “Peirce’s Semiotic to Inform Spatial Modeling – Primitives of
Consciousness”, at the Tartu Summer School of Semiotics. Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia. See
book of abstracts.
2016–present Director of the YouTube channel for General Semiotics.
2015–present Chief curator and archivist of Semiosalong: the afterhours Tartu semiotic salon.
2015–2020 Host of Semiosalong: the afterhours Tartu semiotic salon.

Recommendations

Dr. John H. Schumann. Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics Emeritus, University of California Los Angeles.
schumann@humnet.ucla.edu
Dr. Kalevi Kull. Professor of biosemiotics at Tartu University in Estonia, Department of Semiotics.
kalevi.kull@ut.ee
Dr. Andreas Ventsel. Professor of political and sociosemiotics at Tartu University in Estonia, Department of Semiotics.
andreas.ventsel@ut.ee
Dr. Donald Favareau. Associate Professor at the University Scholars Programme, National University of
Singapore. favareau@gmail.com