Jean Wagemans is Professor of Cognition, Communication, and Argumentation at the University of Amsterdam. He serves as the chair of the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory, and Rhetoric, and coordinates the interdisciplinary research group Language and Cognition in Argumentation (LANCAR).
Wagemans specializes in the Philosophy of Argument. He is the originator of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA), an innovative taxonomy of persuasive techniques with applications in argument-checking, formal linguistics, and explainable AI. Wagemans authored the chapter on The Philosophy of Argument (2022) in the Cambridge Handbook for the Philosophy of Language and co-authored the Handbook of Argumentation Theory (2014) and Argumentation and debate (in Dutch, 2014). He publishes scientific articles, web content, and popularizing colums, and regularly appears in the media to talk about his research and to provide expert commentary on current affairs.
At the University of Amsterdam, Wagemans teaches courses and supervises theses at the BA, BSc, (r)MA, and PhD level. He is a member of the editorial boards of TOPOI, Argumentation, and Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, and serves as a reviewer for Synthese, Informal Logic, Argument & Computation, and other scientific journals. Wagemans co-directed the ISSA 9th International Conference on Argumentation and as a member of the scientific committees of ECA 2025, ARGAGE 2024, and other conferences in the field.
For more information and downloading of publications, please visit his pages on UvA | ORCID | Academia | Bluesky | LinkedIn.
March 1, 2023
Recent technological developments have led to a change in the way we communicate and argue with each other. In his inaugural lecture, Wagemans discusses how these changes in our communicative and cognitive environment can be mapped using innovative research methods. Wagemans illustrates the applicability of insights from classical rhetoric for combating misinformation. He also pays attention to research into the way in which people try to convince each other on online discussion platforms, rhetorical patterns in the brain, and the argumentative qualities of persuasive texts generated using LLMs such as ChatGPT.
The recordings of this inaugural lecture can be viewed here.