Background

First trained in art history, then in the theory of images and visual semiotics at the University of Bologna with Paolo Fabbri, Maria Giulia Dondero has a Ph.D. in communication and new technologies, which she received in May 2005 at the University of Milan; her dissertation concerned the semiotics of photography.

At first her work dealt with the status of the photographic image itself (artistic, documentary, scientific) and its relation to the contemporary stabilisation of visual genres (family pictures, tourist photos, photos taken at the theatre, etc.). Today after the publication of her book Le sacré dans l'image photographique. Etudes sémiotiques, she is working on visual argumentation in scientific discourse, more precisely on the relationship that exists between visualisation and mathematisation, and on the relationship that is being established between scientific images and artistic images in the vulgarisation of the sciences.

Her job as a researcher at the ULg (since September 2006) has not prevented her from working in international research programmes (ANR) with the Centre de Recherches Sémiotiques (CeRes) of the University of Limoges, the University IUAV of Venice, and the University of Strasbourg as well as the University of Avignon. To date she has published – in French, Italian and English – about 40 articles in journals of semiotics, communication and art theory. We may cite among others, Protée, Nouveaux Actes Sémiotiques, Visible, Communication et Langage, Recherches en Communication, Il Verri.