Marie-Theres Fester-Seeger, PhD

Faculty of Social and Cultural Sciences (Kuwi)

Academic Staff Member Postdoctoral Fellow, Postdoc Network Brandenburg

I am an interdisciplinary researcher who is deeply concerned with human complexity - what makes human living beings, in fact, human. Following nonrepresentational, dialogical and systemic approaches to cognition and language, I seek to investigate the underlying influences and dynamics that inform human perceiving, acting, thinking, speaking and learning. Pursuing a person-oriented view, I am interested in how human engagement with others and speech-enabled AI-technology enriches human becoming. Or, put differently, how our engagement with others and ‘things’ changes us as persons.

currently on parental leave / momentan in Elternzeit

Consultations take place by arrangement. Both online and offline appointments are possible. Please send me an email for scheduling an appointment.

Research Interests

Distributed Language /Languaging Perspective
Systemic Cognition
Radical Embodied Cognitive Science
Human Presence /Presencing
Multiscalar Temporal Cognition
Dialogicality
Cognitive Anthropology
Human Interactivity
Human engagement with speech-enabled AI-Technology

Read about current research projects

Current Memberships

Member of the Working Group 6 “Beliefs, Language and Ideology” in COST ACTION ‘Language in the Human-Machine Era’ (CA19102)

Past Memberships

Research Center for Human Interactivity (CHI), University of Southern Denmark (September 2014 – July 2021).

Awarded Grant

Individual Grant, Postdoc Network Brandenburg, February 2022 – January 2024. Project: How do people ‘talk’ to machines? A cognitive ethnography of human engagement with voice assistants

Articles

Gahrn-Andersen, R., Johannessen, C. M., Harvey, M. I., Simonsen, L. M., Trasmundi, S. B., Marchetti, E., Worsøe, L.B., Fester-Seeger, M.-T., Lebahn, M., Steffensen, S. V. (2019). Interactivity: Why, What and How? Rask, 50, 113-135

Fester, M-T. and Cowley, S.J. (2018). Breathing life into social presence: The case of texting between friends. Pragmatics and Society 9(2), 274-296

Cowley, S.J. and Fester, M-T. (2017). Voices in human agency: The power of presence. Reti, saperi, linguaggi 4(2), 303-320

Book chapter

Cowley, S.J. and Fester, M-T. (in press/2023). Coming to conceive: Radical Embodied Thinking in Action. In: Mark E. King & Paul J. Thibault (Eds.). Learning as Interactivity, Movement, Growth and Becoming, Volume 1: Ecologies of Learning in Higher Education. London and New York: Routledge.

Currently Under Review

Fester-Seeger, M.-T. (under review). Human Presencing: Why social presence is not an illusion. Submitted to AI & Society

Cowley, S.J. and Fester-Seeger, M.-T. (under review). Re-evoking absent people: what languaging implies for radical embodiment. Submitted to Linguistic Frontiers.

PhD-Thesis:

Fester-Seeger, M.-T. (2021). Presencing: Rhythm and Human Cognitive Agency. Unpublished PhD-Thesis. Odense: University of Southern Denmark.

Other research experience/projects

University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark
Department of Political Science and Public Management
May 2021-July 2021
Research Assistant (part-time)
Supervisor: Dr. Chiara De Franco
Project: New conceptions of language and narratives in international relations and international practices theory
Task: Coding and analysis of diplomatic conversations from the Digital National Security Archive (DNSA) within the theoretical framework of Humberto Maturana’s notion of languaging and emotioning.

Project: “Out of Control: Living in Culture of Fear”
Research Centre of Computational & Organisational Cognition (CORG), University of Southern Denmark, Slagelse
March 2016 – May 2016
Research and Lab Assistant
Supervisors: Dr. Davide Seechi
Assisting with experimental work on “nudging”.

Project: Data Mining and Social Media
Project in cooperation with the Red Hen Lab. Department of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark, Slagelse
November 2014 – June 2015
Student worker

Wintersemester 2022/23

Doing Language: The body, the other, and time (MA, Mo 11-13)

Former teaching experience

Digital Communication (fall term 209, undergraduate course, Instructor, Department of Language and Cognition, University of Southern Denmark, Slagelse).

Language Management (fall term 2019, MA, teaching assistant, instructed by Dr. Klaus Geyer, Department of Language and Cognition, University of Southern Denmark, Odense)

Conference organisation

30.-31. 02. 2023. International Workshop “AI-Technology as Interactional Human Culture: Language, Data Practice and Social Struggle”, organised with Britta Schneider,Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), funded by Brandenburgisches Zentrum für Medienwissenschaften (ZeM). Speakers: Emily Bender, Andreas Hepp, Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi, Nicolas Flores-Herr

Presentations

“The system-in-the-person: how a Heideggerian view in systemic cognition illuminates the plurality of a languaging person’s lived experience” at Language, Languages, and Post-Cognitivism. July 14 -15, 2022. Venice, Italy.

Panelist, „Wie „sprechen“ Menschen mit Maschinen? Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion neugedacht aus Sicht der Languaging Perspektive“, Panel on „Was ist menschliche Sprache? Lautliche Kommunikation und ihre Konzeptualisierung im Zeitalter von Mensch-Maschine Interaktion“ at Posthumanismus.Transhumanismus. Jenseits des Menschen? 7. Jahrestagung der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft. May 25 – 28, 2022, Graz, Austria, organised with Dorothea Horst and Britta Schneider.

“Rhythm of others: a distributed perspective on human presence in global communication” at Unthinking Language – Paths towards Posthumanist Understandings of Human Interactions, March 24-26, 2022, Europa-Universität Viadrina, Frankfurt/Oder, Germany.
Schneider, B. and Fester-Seeger, M-T. “Borders beyond Humans – The role of Human-Material Entanglements in Creating Human Boundaries”. Border Challenge 2021, November 11-12, 2021. Bern, Switzerland

“Who’s behind the machine? Understanding AI-Technology as a conglomerate of human influences” at LITHME Whole Action Conference, October 20, 2021. Online.

“An investigation of a person’s lived temporality: a qualitative case study” (accepted as long talk) at 5th International Conference on Interactivity, Language & Cognition- Integrating Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in the Cognitive and Language Sciences, September 15-19, 2021, Warsaw, Poland/online.

Panelist, “A temporal-embodied perspective on mobile reading,” Panel on “Embodied Reading and Learning: Empirical Investigations” at conference Speaking Bodies: Embodied cognition at the crossroads of Philosophy, Linguistics, Psychology and Artificial Intelligence, May 13-15, 2021, Cluj-Napoca, Romania (online conference) (originally scheduled for May 2020 but moved due to COVID19-Pandemic).

Panelist, “Retrospecting: A temporal-embodied perspective on human presence,” Panel on “Multi-scalar temporalities (MSTs): the case of languaging,” at 4th Avant Conference Trends in Interdisciplinary Studies, Porto, Portugal, October 24-26, 2019.

“Embodied mediated intimacy: A case study of felt bodily presence in global communication,” at 2nd Symposium on Embodied Interaction: Gesture, Touch, and Embodied Meaning-Making. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, June 26-27, 2018.

“Anchoring the Unsaid and Unseen: The slow process of sensorimotor empathy.” 2nd LangEnact conference on “Meaning without Representation: Grounding Language in Sensorimotor Coordination”. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, September 25-27, 2017.

Cowley and Fester (2016). “Language, languaging and man-made coding,” CFP-Sixteenth Annual Gatherings in Biosemiotics, Charles University, Prague, July 2016.

“Visualised utterances ‘hearing voices’ – text-mediated dialogical psychology in an interworld,” Third International Conference on Interactivity, Language and Cognition: the tactility of thinking and talking, Kingston University London, June 2016.