Activities

27 May 2026

Prof. Biljana Mišić Ilić visited colleagues from NBU in Sofia

Dr. Biljana Mišić Ilić, full professor in the Department of English, Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Niš, and an affiliate of the Center for Cognitive Sciences, paid a visit to the Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia. She gave a talk entitled "Concept construction and interpretation: The role of image schemas and their underlying schematic principles in lexical semantics". Prof. Mišić Ilić presented a corpus-based study exploring how a specific cluster of motion-related image schemas—namely FORCE, PATH, and CENTER-PERIPHERY/PERIPHERY-CENTER—motivate the lexical semantics of various expressions

. Part of the interdisciplinary SCHEMAS Project (2022–2025), conducted by researchers from the Center for Cognitive Sciences funded by the Serbian Science Fund, the research aimed to connect such embodied notions dealing with physical space to cognitive meaning construction and abstract linguistic extensions

. Using a corpus of approximately 200,000 words compiled from British and American daily newspapers, the study manually annotated nearly 270 expressions denoting caused or self-propelled motion

. The findings classified these expressions into six distinct semantic subtypes, demonstrating that metaphorical usages are far more frequent than literal ones, while laying a groundwork for potential higher-order "meta-schemas" in conceptual semantics

. Fruitful discussion and further interaction with colleagues from Sofia followed.

21 May 2026

Prof. Veselina Kadreva's visit

On May 21, 2026, at 6 PM, a lecture titled “Psychological Predictors of Conspiracy Beliefs: Evidence from Correlational and Experimental Studies” was held as part of a CEEPUS research exchange between the Department of Cognitive Science and Psychology at the New Bulgarian University and the Center for Cognitive Sciences at the University of Niš. The talk by Asst. Prof. Veselina Kadreva from NBU brought together researchers interested in cognitive, affective, and social aspects of belief formation and misinformation. The lecture presented empirical findings from both correlational and experimental studies on conspiracy beliefs, focusing on the role of personality traits, emotional factors, and cognitive styles. Additional experimental evidence addressed situational influences such as perceived control and manipulations encouraging analytic thinking. Prof. Kadreva also discussed implications for understanding resistance to institutional trust and public health recommendations, as well as potential directions for future interventions.

06-08 May 2026

The first workshop on embodied meaning within the collaborative project supported by the Bulgarian and Serbian Academies of Sciences

From May 6 to 8, 2026, researchers from our Center working on the bilateral cooperation project between the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences visited the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences as part of the project ““Embodied Meaning: Models of Expression, Emotion and Language”. The visit included Prof. Dr. Mihailo Antović and doctoral researchers Anja Petrović and Miloš Milisavljević. The central event of the visit was a symposium on embodied meaning held on May 7, where participants from Serbia and Bulgaria presented recent research in multimodal semantics, music cognition, visual cognition, affective interpretation, and embodied cognition. Presentations addressed topics such as conceptual structures in music and art, color conceptualization in poetry, motor skill acquisition, video game music, and joint action in artistic practice. The symposium concluded with a discussion of future collaborative activities, including a follow-up symposium in Niš planned for October 2026 and the preparation of joint publications. The meeting represented an important step in strengthening academic cooperation between the participating institutions and research teams.