Hamburg Institute for Advanced Study
Germany
fellow
Massimo Leone
Home institution
University of Turino
Country of origin (home institution)
Italy
Discipline(s)
Computers and intelligent systems
Information and communication sciences
Interdisciplinary
Language sciences and linguistics
Theme(s)
Artificial Intelligence
Cities & States
Digital Society
Information & media
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About
Massimo Leone is a Professor of Philosophy of Communication, Cultural Semiotics, and Visual Semiotics at the Department of Philosophy and Educational Sciences at the University of Turin since 2005. He has been leading the Center for Religious Studies at the “Bruno Kessler Foundation” in Trento since his appointment in 2022. He serves as a part-time Professor of Semiotics in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at the University of Shanghai since 2016 and is an associate member of Cambridge Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge and an adjunct professor at the UCAB University of Caracas. Leone is a member of the European Academy and the recipient of both a 2018 ERC Consolidator Grant and a 2022 ERC Proof of Concept Grant. He is the editor-in-chief of Lexia, the Semiotic Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Communication at the University of Turin, Italy, co-editor-in-chief of Semiotica (De Gruyter) and co-editor of several book series.
Leone’s research focuses on cultural semiotics, with particular emphasis on religion, visual cultures and their digital developments. He currently investigates theoretical frameworks for modeling cultural change in semiotic terms, processes of meaning transformation at cultural frontiers as well as semiotic ideologies at the crossroads between material and digital cultures.
Research Project
Envisaging the City: An Interdisciplinary Study of Bio-Digital Urban Facescapes
Massimo Leone’s research focuses on cultural semiotics, with particular emphasis on religion, visual cultures and their digital developments. He currently investigates theoretical frameworks for modeling cultural change in semiotic terms, processes of meaning transformation at cultural frontiers as well as semiotic ideologies at the crossroads between material and digital cultures.
At HIAS, Massimo Leone will carry out an interdisciplinary research project titled “Envisaging the City: An Interdisciplinary Study of Bio-Digital Urban Facescapes”. This project aims to investigate the sociocultural impact of facial digital technology in contemporary urban settings, focusing particularly on German metropolises. Leone’s research will explore how human faces in urban environments are increasingly captured by digital devices and analyzed through artificial intelligence, leading to automated facial recognition on a large scale. This phenomenon raises significant ethical, political and social questions, especially regarding privacy, surveillance and the commercialization of facial images.
Research Interests:
semiotics; religion: visual culture; digital;
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