The Transitions Institute aims to explore the different ways in which transitions are challenging and affecting nature and human societies in unprecedented ways, requiring a radical shift in our previous political, social and ethical patterns.
The Institute's research focuses on areas of critical importance such as the environment, economics, politics, mobility, law, justice, social cohesion, development, education, protection against vulnerability, etc.

The Transitions Institute promotes interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaborative research around themes rather than disciplines, through a combination of methods, concepts and theories.
Thanks to their nationally and internationally recognized expertise (F.R.S.-FNRS, European Union, Federal State, Walloon Region, etc.), the members of the Transitions Institute develop "fundamental" research projects but also "action research" projects in the service of society.
Spotlight
Agenda
TRANSDEM Seminar | Markus Hermann Meckl
The TRANSDEM seminars focus on how current institutional, economic, environmental and migratory tensions are transforming and challenging the way our democratic regimes function.
Victimization and identity: the post-heroic society
More info to come
Methods" seminar | Philine Widmer
"Methods" is a series of seminars organized by the Institut Transitions at the University of Namur with the aim of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange. All seminars take place in a hybrid format.
Orator: Philine Widmer
More info to come.
"Methods "seminars
The Methods Seminar is a series of seminars organized at the University of Namur with the aim of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange. All seminars take place in a hybrid format.
This seminar series focuses on advanced methodological approaches, particularly in the fields of natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), video and image analysis, and multimodal analysis.
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Methods" seminar | Computational approaches to meaning change
"Methods" is a series of seminars organized by the Institut Transitions at the University of Namur with the aim of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange. All seminars take place in a hybrid format.
Orator: Barbara McGilivray - Senior Lecturer in Digital and Computational Humanities at King's College London
Semantic change, i.e. the evolution of word meanings over time, offers crucial information about historical, cultural and linguistic processes. Language acts as a mirror of societal change, reflecting evolving values, norms and technological advances. Understanding how the meaning of words evolves enables us to trace these transformations and gain a deeper understanding of our distant and recent past.
This seminar explores how computational methods are revolutionizing our ability to analyze semantic change in historical texts, addressing a major challenge in the field of digital humanities. While advanced computational methods enable us to analyze vast datasets and uncover previously inaccessible patterns, few natural language processing algorithms fully take into account the dynamic nature of language, particularly semantics, which is essential for research in the humanities. As AI systems develop to better understand the historical context and dynamics of language, human annotation and interpretation remain essential to capture the nuances of language and its cultural context.
In this presentation, I will show how computational and human-centered approaches can be effectively combined to examine semantic change and its links to cultural and technological developments. I will present examples illustrating how semantic change can be analyzed across temporal, cultural and textual dimensions.
"Methods "seminars
The Methods Seminar is a series of seminars organized at the University of Namur with the aim of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and knowledge exchange. All seminars take place in a hybrid format.
This seminar series focuses on advanced methodological approaches, particularly in the fields of natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI), video and image analysis, and multimodal analysis.
To stay informed about details of upcoming seminars, please subscribe to our mailing list below.