From Communication to Presence

If there is one prerequisite that is critical for education, it is the need to communicate clearly and effectively. Communication is the core activity for an educator, conveying and sharing information from one person to another, from one organization to another - or a combination of both. Professor Luigi Anolli has been one of the most distinguished leaders in the field of communication psychology in the past three decades through his contributions and his deep influence on many researchers and colleagues. Throughout his long career, he has made fundamental and profound contributions to various areas of psychology, including communication, emotion and culture psychology. Anolli is one of the pioneers in the psychological study of miscommunication. Overcoming the traditional concept of miscommunication as a lack, fault and violation of rules, he has advanced modern communication psychology in a unique and far reaching manner. In this perspective, detailed in his Miscommunication as a Chance Theory (MaCHT), communication sets up a unique and global category, which definitely includes miscommunication phenomena as important objects of investigation.
Anolli also had a significant impact on defining and applying advanced techniques to understand and analyze a broad range of communicative and emotional phenomena - from Irony and Deception to Shame - throughout the physiological parameters, vocal nonverbal features, facial expression and posture emerging within a communicative interaction. The chapters in this book are authored by colleagues and friends of Anolli and the topics covered are closely related to Anolli's researches. In fact, the contributions included in this festschrift encompass a series of topics in communication psychology to which he contributed directly, exhibited an abiding interest, and/or supported indirectly through his role as Director of the CESCOM.