Dear colleagues,

Could you please help distribute the information below? Thank you very much in advance!

------------------------------------------------

***With apologies for multiple postings***

*MMSYM 2023*

*1st International Multimodal Communication Symposium, April 27-28 2023, Barcelona*

The *1st International Multimodal Communication Symposium (**MMSYM 2023)* will be held from Thursday 27th to Friday 28th April 2023 at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Catalonia.

*MMSYM 2023* follows up on a tradition established by the Swedish Symposia on Multimodal Communication held from 1997 until 2000, and continued by the Nordic Symposia on Multimodal Communication held from 2003 to 2012. Since 2013, the symposium has acquired a broader European dimension, with editions held in Malta (2013), Tartu (2014), Dublin (2015), Copenhagen (2016), Bielefeld (2017), and Leuven (2019). To acknowledge its international ambition, this year, the symposium in Barcelona has updated its name to *1st International Multimodal Communication Symposium*.

The symposium is locally organized at Universitat Pompeu Fabra with the support of the research groups collaborating within the GEHM network (GEstures and Head Movements in Language, https://cst.ku.dk/english/projects/gestures-and-head-movements-in-language-g...), whose goal is to foster research into the way hand gestures and head movements interact with speech in face-to-face and human-computer multimodal communication.

We welcome works aimed at exploring different approaches to multimodal communication, including research on multimodality in human communication and/or in human-computer interaction. In addition, this year’s symposium has a particular interest in three main research themes:

1) the language-specific characteristics of gesture-speech interaction

2) multimodal prominence

3) the conceptual and statistical modelling of multimodal contributions, with particular regard to head movements and the use of gaze.

Therefore, we particularly encourage contributions dealing with––but not limited to––the three topics described above.

The symposium will feature *keynote talks* by three confirmed invited speakers:

§ *Alan Cienki*, Professor of Language Use & Cognition and English Linguistics, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Website: https://research.vu.nl/en/persons/alan-cienki

§ *Jelena Krivokapić*, Associate Professor in Linguistics, University of Michigan. Website: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/jelenakrivokapic/

§ *Catherine Pelachaud*, Director of Research, Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics, Campus Pierre et Marie Curie, Sorbonne Université. Website: https://www.isir.upmc.fr/personnel/pelachaud/

*Abstract submission guidelines*

1) Abstracts should be written in English and should not exceed 2 A4 pages (max. 700 words) including examples, figures and references. The format should comply with the MS Word model provided *here*: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Eyi9laqglihk7OmfFWv8QsEd1jqzYjIi/edit?rt...

2) Add at least three keywords to your submission.

3) Abstracts should be *anonymous* and submitted in pdf format. All references to authors should be omitted for purposes of blind review.

4) Authors may submit one abstract as first author and up to three abstracts as a co-author.

Please use our *EasyChair* website for abstract submissions: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mmsym2023

Abstracts received after the deadline will not be considered. Accepted abstracts will be allocated as either oral talk or poster presentation, and will be published in the book of abstracts.

*Abstract submission*: September 30, 2022

*Notification of acceptance*: approximately December 15, 2022

For more information, please visit the symposium website at http://mmsym.org/

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact us at mmsym2023@gmail.com

*Local organizing committee:*

Pilar Prieto (coordinator)

Florence Baills

Júlia Florit-Pons

Celia Gorba

Sara Muñoz

Mariia Pronina

Patrick Rohrer

Ïo Valls

Ingrid Vilà-Giménez

Xiaotong Xi

Ting Yao

Yuan Zhang

*Program committee:*

Patrizia Paggio (coordinator, University of Copenhagen)

Jens Edlund (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)

Marianne Gullberg (Lund University)

David House (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm)

Maria Koutsombogera (Trinity College Dublin)

Pilar Prieto (ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Carl Vogel (Trinity College Dublin)

Margaret Zellers (Kiel University)

------------------------------------------------

Please feel free to share the call with your colleagues/networks.

Best wishes,

The MMSYM 2023 Organizing Committee