Editorial: Anticipation and change

Abstract

Work on this special issue started in 2019 under the auspices of the Nordic As sociation for Semiotic Studies (NASS). This organization, which serves to bring together the semiotics communities of the European countries in the Nordic and the Baltic regions – Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden – held its 11th international conference at the University of Stavanger, Norway, on 13–15 June 2019, with the theme of the same name as this issue, “Anticipation and Change”. Although the purpose of NASS as an organization has been to endorse and facilitate contacts, cooperation, and development of research collaboration and projects between its member countries, the conference at the University of Stavanger had a far broader international scope. In fact, it brought together about 60 participants from all over Europe as well as the USA. These introductory notes set out to give a brief overview of NASS as an organization, of the Stavanger conference, and of the resulting issue of Sign Systems Studies, the oldest international semiotic periodical in the world. NASS was founded in 1987 at a meeting of Nordic semioticians in Imatra, Finland. Its first series of conferences and week-long Nordic Research Courses took place in Odense, Denmark (1990), Lund, Sweden (1992), Trondheim, Norway (1994), Imatra, Finland (1996), Oslo, Norway (1998), and Copenhagen, Denmark (2000). It then fell into a period of hibernation for more than a decade until May 2011, when the 7th conference of NASS was organized in Lund, Sweden. The conference was a success and brought together many seminal scholars from all over the world. This revival was confirmed the following year by the 25-year