Valence Asymmetries Conference

VALENCE ASYMMETRIES CONFERENCE: 19/03/2026 TO 20/03/2026

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP: 18/03/2026

SALA NAU | UNIVERSITAT POMPEU FABRA | ROC BORONAT, POBLENOU, BARCELONA

REGISTRATION: CLOSING SOON

The first Valence Asymmetries conference is nearly here. The conference will will take place on March 19th-20th 2026 with a pre-conference workshop on the 18th of March. The conference will take place in Sala Nau at the Poblenou Campus of Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

This interdisciplinary event will discuss themes surrounding the role of valence asymmetries - the systematic ways in which "the bad" and "the good" differ -  in language and cognition. These include the role of affect in perception, language processing, social cognition, communication, judgement and morality. The program brings together philosophical analysis and argumentation with experimental and corpus-based work in linguistics and psychology, including cross-linguistic work, formal semantics, experimental pragmatics, and computational approaches to affect and emotion in language.

This event brings together researchers at all career levels, with participants joining from around the world. We hope you can join us and contribute your perspective to the discussion.

Our keynote speakers are: 
Hans Alves (Ruhr Universität Bochum),
Frédérique de Vignemont (Institut Jean Nicod),
Saif M. Mohammad (National Research Council Canada),
Pascale Willemsen (Universität Zürich)

In addition to our invited speakers, we will also have talks by Filippo Domaneschi & Federico Bina, Ida Miczke, Alexey Tymbay, Leila Glass and Valentina Apresyan. Our pre-conference workshop includes talks from Said M. Mohammad, Eirini Sossidi, Anouch Bourmayan, as well as talks from the Valence Asymmetries Team (Morgan Moyer, Michelle Stankovic and Isidora Stojanovic).

We hope to see you all there!

Registration closes 20 February. Registration is free, but necessary. If you plan on attending, please register by clicking on the enrol button on our eventum page: http://eventum.upf.edu/go/valenceasymmetries

Contact: [email protected]

Event page: http://eventum.upf.edu/go/valenceasymmetries

Website: https://www.upf.edu/web/valence-asymmetries

This event is funded by Isidora Stojanovic’s ERC Advanced Grant “Valence Asymmetries: the positive, the negative, the good and the bad in language, mind and morality” (GA n° 101142133).