Salvatore Attardo, PhD (Purdue, 1991), is professor of Linguistics at Texas A&M University-Commerce. His books include Linguistic Theories of Humor (DeGruyter, 1994; second edition 2024), Humorous Texts (DeGruyter, 2001), and The Linguistics of Humor, an introduction (Oxford UP, 2020). He edited HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research (2002-2011), the Encyclopedia of Humor Studies (Sage, 2014) and the Handbook of Language and Humor (Routledge, 2017). Among his recent books are Pragmatics and its applications to TESOL and SLA (Wiley, 2021), Eye Tracking in Linguistics (Bloomsbury, 2023), both co-authored with Lucy Pickering, and Humor 2.0: How the Internet changed Humor (Anthem, 2023). He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the ISHS in 2022.
Francisco Yus is full professor at the University of Alicante, Spain. He has a PhD in linguistics and has specialised in the application of pragmatics (especially relevance theory) to media discourses and conversational issues, about which he has published many articles, chapters and books (on relevance theory: Cooperación y relevancia. Dos aproximaciones pragmáticas a la interpretación, 1997 and 2nd updated edition 2003). For instance, he has made two applications of pragmatics to characters in alternative comics (Conversational cooperation in alternative comics, 1995; El discurso femenino en el cómic alternativo inglés, 2001), proposed a pragmatic verbal-visual model of communication in media discourses (La interpretación y la imagen de masas, 1997), studied the written-oral interface (La preeminencia de la voz, 1998) and developed a pragmatic approach to Internet-mediated communication (Ciberpragmática. El uso del lenguaje en Internet, Ariel, 2001; Ciberpragmática 2.0. Nuevos usos del lenguaje en Internet, Ariel, 2010; Cyberpragmatics. Internet-Mediated Communication in Context, John Benjamins, 2011; Smartphone Communication. Interactions in the App Ecosystem, Routledge, 2022; Emoji Pragmatics, Palgrave Macmillan, in press 2025). Latest research has to do with the application of relevance theory to the analysis of misunderstandings and irony, as well as to the production and interpretation of humorous discourses (Humour and Relevance, John Benjamins, 2016; Pragmatics of Internet Humour, Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). Francisco Yus is also editor of the journal Internet Pragmatics (with Chaoqun Xie, John Benjamins, https://benjamins.com/catalog/ip).
Andrew Bricker is Associate Professor of English Literature in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University in Belgium and a Senior Fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. He is currently an Academic Visitor for 2024-2025 at the Hub of Law and the Humanities at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies at the University of London and will be a Visiting Fellow at Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge during Lent Term 2025. Starting in March 2025, Bricker will be Principal Investigator for DELIAH: Democratic Literacy and Humour (2025-2029), which is funded by the Horizon Europe Framework Programme for Research and Innovation. He is the author of Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670-1792 (2022), published by Oxford University Press.
Alberto Godioli is Associate Professor at the University of Groningen (the Netherlands). His research focuses on humor and free speech jurisprudence from an interdisciplinary perspective, and he is principal investigator of a five-year project on this topic (Humor in Court, NWO Vidi grant, 2022-2027). In 2022, together with Prof. Laura Little, he founded ForHum: Forum for Humor and the Law – a global platform for lawyers, humor scholars, artists, and anyone interested in humor, freedom of expression and related legal matters. In dialogue with experts from UNESCO, ARTICLE 19 and the African and European Human Rights Courts among others, Alberto is currently finalizing the toolkit What’s in a Joke? Assessing Humor in Free Speech Jurisprudence and Content Moderation (to be published in Spring 2025). His other publications on the subject include the report Humor and Free Speech: A Comparative Analysis of Global Case Law (with Jennifer Young; Columbia Global Freedom of Expression, 2023), as well as Joking Against Humanity? Dark Humor and (De)familiarization (Palgrave, 2024), Laughing Matters: Humor, Free Speech and Hate Speech at the European Court of Human Rights (with Jennifer Young and Matteo Fiori; International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 2022), and the special issue Humor and the Law: The Difficulty of Judging Jests (co-edited with Brigitte Adriaensen, Andrew Bricker and Ted Laros, HUMOR, 2022).
Gil Greengross is a lecturer in the Department of Psychology at Aberystwyth University. He earned his Ph.D. in Evolutionary Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. His interdisciplinary research bridges traditional fields of study such as psychology, anthropology, and biology, and includes the evolutionary and genetic bases of humor and laughter, the importance of humor in mating, sex differences in humor, lives and personalities of stand-up comedians and improv artists, assessment of humor ability, and more. He has a strong interest in studying people with extreme creative abilities and people from creative occupations such as stand-up comedians, improvisational artists and magicians.
Sharon Lockyer is a Reader in Sociology and Communications at Brunel University of London, UK. She is the Founding Director of the Centre for Comedy Studies Research (CCSR) and Past President of the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS). Her research focuses on the sociology of humour and comedy, critical comedy studies, humour and identity, and the ethics and aesthetics of humorous discourse, and she is widely published in these areas. Sharon has been a regular ISHS conference presenter since 1999 and was awarded an ISHS Emerging Scholar Award in 2004. Sharon is also Editorial Board Member of the ISHS’s journal, HUMOR, and the ISHS-endorsed journal, European Journal of Humour Research. From 2016-2019 she served the ISHS Executive Board as an Elected Executive Board Member-at-Large. Sharon is Founding Co-editor (with Professor Roger Sabin) of the Palgrave Studies in Comedy book series – please do get in touch with Sharon during the conference if you have book ideas you would like to discuss!
