Margrethe Voll Storaas is a PhD candidate at the Department of Physical Education and Social Science. On October 17, 2025, 10:15—16:00 she will defend her dissertation titled As Agent and Environment: A Biosemiotic Understanding of the Moving Body within Ecology and Technology from Cases in Sport at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Auditorium Innsikt.
About the study
Some things we know for certain: humans are bodies, and bodies are biological.
Fantastically, the biology of people is not only physical but psychological – Had it been a word already, we could have said the living human body is emminded (rather than the subject or mind being embodied).
For now, we must make do with acknowledging our sentience, subjectivity, and personhood on the condition to our existence that a living person always and unavoidably makes meaning.
We can make up entire worlds in our minds. In this study, the exceptional form of meaning-making that makes us humans is also precisely what makes us biology – or nature, if you will. As such, nature is considered the origin for meaning-making as an autonomous ability.
This makes the human as we know it today vulnerable to technological pressures against ecological processes on all levels.
As semiotic (sign-interpreting) agents, we exist within a web of relations that itself constitutes the environment to the agent.
This environment, in its naturemade state, is what once made us. It is therefore a complete breach with evolutionary principles that we are now making and remaking our own environments.
This modern process of technologization is poorly understood for its effects on what we are and what we can do. An ecological, holistic understanding of ourselves is needed.
The study narrows down to the moving body and asks, ‘how may we understand the moving body ecologically in technologized environments?’ For this study, the cultural and body-contingent arena of sport is a well-suited context.
To ensure a holistic treatment, I look to the effects on both our physical exterior, physical interior, and environing linguistic milieu through three cases: humanly constructed sporting sites, the private international sport event of Enhanced Games that legalizes performance-enhancing substances, and a modern form of political language engineering that aims to enhance (‘ameliorate’) society.
The study finds grounds for rethinking our view and treatment of both the human as body, of language, ecology, and technology, and the biology of science and understanding itself.
Read the thesis here
Committee
Chair
- Professor Ørnulf Seippel, Department of Physical Education and Social Science, NIH
Opponents
- Professor Morten Tønnessen, University of Stavanger
- Professor Kathinka Evers, Uppsala University
Supervisors
- Professor Sigmund Loland, Department of Physical Education and Social Science, NIH
- Professor Kenneth Aggerholm, Department of Teacher Education and Outdoor Studies, NIH
Program
- 10.15-11.00: Trial Lecture: “The ecology of the non-human body in the Anthropocene: Comparing the human and non-human body”
- 13.00-16.00: Public defense of the thesis: As Agent and Environment: A Biosemiotic Understanding of the Moving Body within Ecology and Technology through Case Studies in Sport
Practical info
The defense will be led by: Pro-Rector Live Steinnes Luteberget
The defense is open to everyone and will be streamed on NIH’s YouTube channel.
