During the four years of its life, this COST Action has brought together researchers fromsuch diverse fields as philosophy, linguistics, Sinology, Egyptology, cognition and computer science to analyse human categorisation as it is reflected in classification systems. The research foci, namely, types of classification systems, domain specificity and structure, the universal or culture-dependent quality of classification systems, as well as their comparative development, stabilisation and adaptation, were addressed with reference to languages, texts and systems of knowledge organisation from a variety of cultures across all periods of history.

The final conference of this networking initiative, entitled Categorizing Human Experience: Classification in Languages and Knowledge Systems, synthesises the results of four years of fruitful international and interdisciplinary cooperation. It addresses such topics as the typology of classifier systems in languages, the categorization of textual material (particularly through the use of computational methods), organizing principles of the mind as they are reflected in different media, the classification of events and, lastly, the variation and adaptation of classification systems. This broad approach to categorisation tendencies across cultures may therefore make the conference of interest to scholars working within disciplines ranging from linguistics through to anthropology and informatics.