Conversational Dynamics

Workshop

On April 3rd, 2025, I organized a one-day workshop at the University of Bologna to explore key questions surrounding the emergence of abstraction and abstractness in conversation, and how social context intertwines with these variables to shape meaning. This event featured national and international speakers who are experts in linguistics, cognition, social interaction, and conversation analysis.

Speakers: Anna Borghi, Riccardo Fusaroli, Bodo Winter, Caterina Mauri, Mark Dingemanse, Caterina Villani
All recordings are available on YouTube

My talk on "Abstractness and Specificity in Dialogue"

Prize

March 2026 - Best PhD Thesis Award

My PhD Thesis, titled "Varieties, flexibility and use of abstract concepts. A multiple grounded perspective," was awarded second prize (3.000 €) in the Best PhD Thesis Award, selected among theses examined over the past five years within the PhD programme in Philosophy, Science, Cognition and Semiotics at the University of Bologna (Premio migliore tesi di dottorato legato testamentario sig. Paolo Di Giusto, Call rep. 5/2026). The thesis is publicly available; you can read it here

February 2026 - MSCA Seal of Excellence

My proposal, submitted under the Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions call Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025, was recognized as a high-quality project (89.2/100) in a highly competitive evaluation process.

December 2017 - Best Paper Award

I received second prize in the “Premio Vittorio Girotto per il Best Paper AISC” at the 14th Annual Conference of the Italian Association of Cognitive Science (December 14-16, 2017). The awarded articles were published in Sistemi Intelligenti (Villani et al., 2018). More info is available on the AISC website, awards and funding, Edizione 2017.

Public engagement activities

Festival della Scienza 2024

In October 2024, as part of the ABRACTION project, I had the opportunity to deliver two-day workshops at the Festival della Scienza in Genoa. Working with 10 different groups of middle and high school students, I facilitated interactive word-ladder tasks. This hands-on approach not only encouraged young students to explore semantic taxonomic relationships between words (e.g., cat is a type of felin; freedom of speech is a type of right) but also actively promoted essential skills, such as teamwork, critical thinking, and effective communication.

Penne Amiche della Scienza

In 2023-2024, I participated in the “Penne Amiche della Scienza” program, exchanging letters with middle school students from Caserta, southern Italy, to share insights about my scientific career, answer their questions, and inspire them to pursue science while challenging stereotypes about gender and socio-economic barriers.

Public school

From November 2023 to May 2024, I designed and led workshops at all levels of public school, from primary to high school, in Bologna (Italy), reaching a total of approximately 300 students and pupils.

These workshops aimed at enhancing students’ lexical and semantic categorization skills by constructing taxonomic relationships between words through the use of Word Ladders, a gamified mobile app developed by the Abstraction ERC project.

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