Prof Johan Siebers

Professor of Philosophy of Language and Communication

Johan Siebers

  • School Faculty of Business and Law

  • Department Law and Social Sciences

  • Location London

Research activities

In my scholarship I aim to understand and articulate the meaning that language and communication have in the lives of people and to use this understanding to create sustainable communication environments that allow life to flourish. We all have our experiences with communication, or the lack of it, from the mundane to the sublime. Being able to articulate what is alive within us, to be heard and to be able to listen to others, lies at the heart of what it means to be human and what it means to live together with others and to realize our potential. We can hardly imagine being who we are without communication. We can hardly imagine a world open to the new without it: "I speak because I have hope in others" (Walter Ong). We can hardly imagine a moral universe without it. I work with ideas and insights from philosophy, communication theory, literature, linguistics, rhetoric, art, religion, spirituality and psychoanalysis to develop modes of understanding the role that communication plays and to offer people practical and reflective ways to deepen their awareness of what it means that we exist in communication. I orientate myself on Martin Buber's notion of the I-you relationship as radically irreducible to other modes of rationality. I believe that improving communication to be more authentic, more free, more imaginative, creative, dialogical and aware is essential to improving our lives and to curbing the detrimental effects of power abuse, which always works by silencing. My work is devoted to helping people overcome their fears and find their way to genuine speaking and listening and even to silence, when silence says more than words or when words fail us, are too much or too little, but life may yet find a way. The love of language is rooted deeply in our human nature; by studying language and communication we deepen that love and hopefully deepen our humanity.

My research is based in the Language and Communication Research Cluster. I am interested in philosophical, theoretical and practical dimensions of human linguistic communication, such as:

conceptions of dialogue and encounter

ontology and ethics of communication

unconscious communication

the place of speech in human life

embodied communication

speech acts and ordinary language philosophy

the relation between philosophy and rhetoric

the rhetoric of death and dying

futurity, process and meaning

community and communication

the language of faith

superheroes of talk

communicative competence and liberation from oppression

Closely related to these themes is my interest in Ernst Bloch's anticipatory philosophy of the unfinished world and of not-yet being. I am an honorary Associate Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where I lead the Ernst Bloch Centre for German Thought. I am Vice-President of the Ernst-Bloch-Gesellschaft, Ludwigshafen. With Keri Facer I edit Routledge Research in Anticipation and Futures and with Cosimo Zene the Marxism and Religion series (Rowman and Littlefield). For Brill Publishers I edit the Bloch Bibliothek with the Historical Materialism book series.

I often work in interdisciplinary contexts and use methods such as art practice as research, Bohmian dialogue, co-created and participatory research, next to more traditional scholarly approaches.

I am the founding and principal editor of the European Journal for Philosophy of Communication (Empedocles) and founder and former chair of the Section for Philosophy of Communication of the European Communication Research and Education Association. 

With Paul Cobley (Language and Media) and Adrian Pablé (Hong Kong University, Department of English)  I organise the annual Middlesex Roundtable on Signs, Language and Communication.

I am available for postgraduate supervision in language and communication, anticipation and futurity, social and critical theory, post-Kantian German philosophy, process thought and speculative metaphysics.

 

Current Teaching

Currently I teach communication on the BA Sociology. I also host a public research seminar in German philosophy at the School of Advanced Study. My teaching experiences have included undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in history and theory of rhetoric, history of philosophy, communication theory, English syntax, language in literature, metaphysics and epistemology, social theory, sociology of religion, research methods in the humanities, philosophy of education.

 

Biography

I am Professor of Philosophy of Language and Communication, based in the Department of Law and Social Sciences. I am also the University's Theme Director for Sustainable Communities and the Environment. My work is located at the crossroads of philosophy, rhetoric, linguistics and communication studies.

I studied philosophy, Dutch language and literature and general linguistics at Radboud University, Nijmegen, where my teacher (and lifelong friend) was the late Pieter Seuren. I did my MA (in philosophy of language) there. My first academic post was as a research fellow in philosophy at Leiden University, where I obtained my doctorate in 1998.

From 1999-2006 I worked for Royal Dutch Shell in a number of roles, especially on scenario planning, external affairs and communication. During this time I was also a part-time lecturer at Leiden University and a visiting fellow at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies of the School of Advanced Study, University of London (then called Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies). 

From 2006-2014 I worked at the University of Central Lancashire, first as Senior Lecturer, later Reader in the English Department. I designed and led the MA in Rhetoric there. Since 2015 I have been at Middlesex University, first as Associate Professor and since 2022 as Professor of Philosophy of Language and Communication. I maintain an Associate Fellowship at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where I am director of the Ernst Bloch Centre for German Thought.

I have held visiting appointments at the Research Centre for Classical German Philosophy, Bochum University; the Department of Rhetoric, University of Tübingen; the Department of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University; the German Department, Sheffield University and St. Mary's University London, among others.

Publications

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