The project offers a new way of researching the changing urban landscape by looking at changes to towns and cities and the role language plays in this. As part of the project, every article within this special edition looks at how writing in the city both makes cities and allows people to know cities. Individual contributions in this collection are linked to earlier research that examines writing as a metaphor for studying cities.
The project is led by Professor Li Wei (IOE) and Professor Adam Jaworski (HKU) and was originally funded by UCL Grand Challenges.
The contributions to this issue tackle several different styles and genres of visual communication as resources for making and imagining the city, its design, organisation, and everyday practices. Some of these include the use of displayed online and offline multilingual poetry, anti-racist campaign posters, text on clothes and accessories, and the use of writing in city logos, among others.
The journal includes a study by Professor Li Wei and Professor Zhu Hua (University of Birmingham) looking at handwritten signs in public places, specifically the London Borough of Newham, and how they work against a context of urban regeneration and socio-cultural transformation. The researchers also analyse the disappearance of signs due to urban development policies, and the emergence of refashioned painted signs with handwritten style lettering in global-facing commercial spaces. The study highlights the significance of handwritten signs and their symbolic values.
Another article, by IOE academic Dr Miguel Perez-Milans, extends the notion of writing to include architectural discourses and multimedia performances about imagined cities. Through examining this, Dr Perez-Milans looks at how people’s ‘professional selves’ are created.
Social Semiotics is a peer reviewed journal that publishes high quality papers dealing with the study of words, images, behaviours, settings, sounds, and design among others, and the way these are connected to the organisation of societies and everyday lives.
Links
When academia feels tough or uncertain
A discussion about the realities many researchers are feeling and how easy it is to become pessimistic at times.
15 May 2026
Did TikTok just divide and conquer feminism?
TikTok’s promotion of commodified femininity erodes feminism’s potential for social justice, finds research from IOE academics exploring young women’s process of identity-formation online.
07 May 2026
IOE alumni explore the diverse perspectives of LGBTQ+ leaders across the UK education sector
A new book co-edited by Alex Baird and Catherine Lee disrupts conventional notions of cis-heteronormative leadership, reframing it as a commitment to challenging systemic inequalities in education.
05 May 2026