Claudio Paolucci is Full Professor of Semiotics and Philosophy of Language at the University of Bologna, where he coordinates the PhD programme in Philosophy, Science, Cognition, and Semiotics in the Department of Philosophy. A scholar of Peirce and Hjelmslev, he primarily works in general semiotics, cognitive sciences, pragmatism, theory of interpretation, artificial intelligence, philosophy and theory of language, and semiotics of cinema and audiovisuals.
He was the Principal Investigator of two European projects: i) NeMo, on the semiotics of interaction and neurodevelopment, with a particular focus on autism spectrum disorders; ii) Fakespotting, on misinformation and fake news. He currently leads the national research project SACreD, focused on creativity and madness. He is the director of the International Centre for Enactivism and Cognitive Semiotics, the scientific coordinator of the International Center for the Humanities “Umberto Eco,” and the president of the Italian Society for the Philosophy of Language.
Since 2012, he has served as the secretary of the Italian Society for the Philosophy of Language. Since 2013, he has been the scientific coordinator of the Advanced School of Humanistic Studies at the University of Bologna, founded by Umberto Eco, who served as its president until his death in 2016. Since 2018, he has been a permanent member of the Balzan Foundation's Inter-Lab. Since 2019, he has coordinated the PhD program in Philosophy, Science, Cognition, and Semiotics. Since 2021, he has directed the International Centre for Enactivism and Cognitive Semiotics. He has been a visiting scholar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris (2003 and 2004), a visiting researcher at the Centre de Recherche en Epistémologie Appliquée (CREA) in Paris (2012), and a visiting professor at universities in Paris (2013), Prague (2014), Memphis (2016, 2018), Olomouc (2017), and Southern Illinois Carbondale (2018). In 2018, he was a resident fellow at the American Institute for Philosophical and Cultural Thought. Since 2019, he has been visiting fellow at the University of Oxford.
Since 2005, he has been a tutor and scientific advisor for the PhD program in Semiotics at the Italian Institute of Human Sciences (SUM) and is the associate editor of the international journal VS-Versus (Anvur Class A), an editor of the international journal Nouveaux Actes Sémiotiques, and a member of the editorial board of the Italian Journal of Cognitive Sciences (Anvur Class A).
After completing his doctoral thesis on interpretive semiotics in 2005 (supervised by Professor Umberto Eco), he was invited to give lecture cycles and seminars at universities in Paris (CREA, EHESS, Sorbonne), São Paulo (PUC, UNESP), Sofia, Palermo, Sozopol, Toulouse, Messina, Limoges, Teramo, Madrid, Liège, Milan (Statale, Cattolica, IULM), Urbino, Boston (Lowell University), Catania, Olomouc, Cassino, Lyon, Rome (La Sapienza, Roma Tre, Tor Vergata), Memphis, Cosenza, UCLA, Turin, Oxford, and Prague (Linguistic Circle, Charles University).
Author of five books and over 100 papers published in national and international peer-reviewed journals, his most significant works include Strutturalismo e interpretazione (Bompiani, 2010, 544 pages), Persona (Bompiani, 2020, 400 pages), and Cognitive Semiotics (Springer, 2021, 180 pages).
Since 2012, he has been a member of the University of Bologna’s team in the European project INTERCO-SSH (FP7). Since 2015, he has led the University of Bologna unit in the National Research Project (PRIN 2015) on Perception, Performativity, and Cognitive Sciences. Since 2019, he has been responsible for the University of Bologna unit in the European project "MeMe. Me and the Media. Fostering Social Media Literacy Competences through Interactive Learning Sets for Adults with Disabilities" (Grant No: 2019-1-LT01-KA204-060697). Since 2019, he has been the Principal Investigator of the European Project "NeMo": NEw MOnitoring Guidelines to Develop Innovative ECEC Teachers Curricula (Grant No: 2019-1-IT02-KA201-063340). Since 2020, he has been the Principal Investigator of the European Project "Fakespotting," on fake news, enunciation, and fact-checking (Grant No: 2020-1-IT02-KA203-079902). Since 2021, he has led the Bologna unit in the European project Brand New Inclusion. Since 2023, he has been the Principal Investigator of the national research project SACreD. Schizophrenia, Autism, and the Myth of Creativity. An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Psychopathological Expression and its Digitalization.
He has served on the Nominating Committee of the Charles Sanders Peirce Society and on the board of the Institute of Advanced Studies (ISA) at the University of Bologna.
Since 2016, he has been an active tutor at the Collegio Superiore of the University of Bologna, where he organizes courses and seminar series (see the teaching pages)
