call for papers

BIOETIIKAN TUTKIMUKSEN TILA JA TULEVAISUUS SUOMESSA
Kansallinen monitieteinen seminaari, Helsingin yliopisto 26.–27.9. 2013

Bioetiikan instituutti Suomeen -työryhmä järjestää syksyllä tilaisuuden, joka kokoaa yhteen alan suomalaiset toimijat ja avaa keskustelun kansallisen bioetiikan tilasta ja tulevaisuudesta. Seminaarissa keskitytään tarkastelemaan bioetiikan tutkimusta eri
tahoilla kuten yliopistoissa, tutkimuslaitoksissa, virastoissa ja toimikunnissa. Tilaisuus on tarkoitettu kaikille, jotka ovat kiinnostuneet bioetiikan tutkimuksesta ja sen kehittämisestä.

Seminaarin kansainvälisenä pääpuhujana on professori Norman Daniels Harvardin yliopistosta. Hän esitelmöi terveydenhuollon resurssikysymyksistä sekä yleisemmin oikeudenmukaisuudesta nyky-yhteiskunnissa.

Seminaari huipentuu paneelikeskusteluun, jossa tarkastellaan erityisen bioetiikan instituutin perustamisesta Suomeen. Instituutin tarkoituksena olisi kehittää bioetiikkaa akateemisena tieteenalana Suomessa ja luoda viitekehys kansalliselle bioetiikan tutkimukselle.

Seminaariin osallistuminen on maksutonta, ja sen kielinä ovat suomi ja englanti. Seminaari alkaa 26.9. noin klo 13 ja päättyy 27.9. noin klo 13.

Ilmoittautumiset 31.5. mennessä:

a)    Esitelmöimään omasta tutkimusaiheestasi (15+5 min, noin 300 sanan abstrakti.) Kerrothan samalla, esitelmöitkö mieluummin suomen vai englannin kielellä.

b)    Osallistujaksi seminaariin, jotta voimme lisätä sinut seminaarin tiedottamiseen tarkoitetulle sähköpostilistalle.

Esitelmän pitäjiin otetaan yhteyttä kesäkuussa ja seminaarin tarkemmasta ohjelmasta tiedotetaan elokuun loppuun mennessä.

Seminaariin liittyviä ajankohtaisia asioita voi seurata myös osoitteessa http://blogs.helsinki.fi/bioetiikanseminaari/

Ilmoittautumiset ja abstraktit pyydetään lähettämään osoitteeseen:
johanna.ahola-launonen at helsinki.fi

Bioetiikan instituutti Suomeen -työryhmä:

Professori Matti Häyry, bioetiikan ja oikeusfilosofian professori,
Manchesterin yliopisto, Englanti
FT Tuija Takala, dosentti, akatemiatutkija, Helsingin yliopisto
FM Heikki Saxén, tohtorikoulutettava, Tampereen yliopisto
VTM, LuK Johanna Ahola-Launonen, tohtorikoulutettava, Helsingin yliopisto

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BIOETHICS RESEARCH IN FINLAND – ITS STATE AND FUTURE
National multidisciplinary seminar, University of Helsinki 26 – 27
September 2013


The Bioethics Institute to Finland Task Force organises an event that will draw together all interested parties to discuss the current state and future directions of bioethics in Finland. The focus is investigative rather than pragmatic, and emphasis will be placed on bioethical research conducted in universities, research institutes, ministries, non-governmental organisations, and committees.

Our international keynote speaker will be Professor Norman Daniels from Harvard University, with presentations on resource allocation in health care and justice more generally.

The seminar will culminate in a panel discussion on the possibility of founding a national institute of investigative bioethics. The institute would stimulate the progress of academic bioethics in Finland and provide a framework for further developments in the field.

Participation in the seminar is free – there is no admission fee. The languages of the event are Finnish and English. The seminar runs from 1 pm on Thursday 26 September to 1 pm on Friday 27 September.

The deadline for registrations is 31 May. Please let us know if

a) you wish to present a paper on your research in bioethics in the seminar (15+5 minutes) – in this case, please send us an abstract of max. 300 words, or if

b) you want to participate and be added on our seminar mailing list.

The speakers will be contacted in June, and the detailed program will be completed and publicised by the end of August.

Seminar news can be followed at http://blogs.helsinki.fi/bioetiikanseminaari/

Please send abstracts and registrations to:
johanna.ahola-launonen at helsinki.fi

The Bioethics Institute to Finland Task Force are:

Professor Matti Häyry, Professor of Bioethics and Philosophy of Law,
University of Manchester, UK
Dr Tuija Takala, Adjunct Professor and Academy of Finland Research
Fellow, University of Helsinki
MA Heikki Saxén, Doctoral Researcher, University of Tampere
MSSc Johanna Ahola-Launonen, Doctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki

International and Interdisciplinary Conference: Culture, Values and Justice

University of Vaasa, Finland, 21–23 May 2014

 

This conference creates and facilitates new research openings and cooperation in the interdisciplinary field of comparative cultural studies by bringing together scholars from different countries and universities worldwide to discuss and debate a range of topics.

 

The theme of the conference draws increased international attention: the issues of cultural encounters are increasingly addressed in terms of values and justice. This trend is related to the growing awareness of universal social problems, including uneven income distribution, increasing health gaps between rich and poor, constant gender inequality, and the ideological roots of environmental problems. These are among the issues being discussed in this conference.

 

The keynote speaker is Professor Kisor Chakrabarti, a distinguished expert in classical Indian philosophy and comparative cultural studies.

 

Call for Abstracts

 

Abstracts: 150 words

Deadline for submission: 10 August 2013

 

Submit abstracts to Dr. Chandana Chakrabarti at chandanachak at gmail.com

Date of proposal acceptance: Week after the proposal is submitted

 

Subtopics:

Ethnic Identity & Culture; Personal Identity in Society; Society, Culture & Consumption; Social Identification; Dynamics of Group Culture; Ethnic Boundaries; Constructing & Deconstructing Ethnic Identity; Evolution of Society; Encountering Different Cultures; Cultural Shock; Society & Effect of Colonization; Media & Society; Morality & Society; Perfectionist & Situational Ethics; Humanism & Positivism; Reductionist Approach to Moral Responsibility; Archaeological Approaches to Society; Hybrid Cultural Systems; Hybrid Ethical Theory; Cultural Roots of Environmental Problems; Uneven Income Distribution as a Social Ethical Issue; The Point of View of Justice; Core Values, Traditions & Justice; etc.

 

Advisory Board Members: Barbara Amodio (USA), Gordon Haist (USA), Robin Kar (USA), Elizabeth Koldzak (Poland), Tommi Lehtonen (Finland), Maria Marczewska (Poland), Debkumar Mukhopadhya (India), Rizwanur Rahman (India), Ming Shao (China), Andrew Ward (UK), Su-Chen Wu (Taiwan)

 

Papers from the Conference will be published subject to editorial review.

 

For further information, contact:

Chandana Chakrabarti, Ph.D.

Institute of Cross-Cultural Studies and Academic Exchange

405 Maple Avenue

Burlington, NC 27216

USA

 

Sponsored by: University of Vaasa, The Society for Indian Philosophy and Religion, Institute for Cross-Cultural Studies and Academic Exchange

Call for papers: Scandinavian-Russian Enlightenment symposium in St.Petersburg

The Aleksanteri Institute of the University of Helsinki will arrange in August, together with St. Petersburg Center of the History of Ideas, a symposium on the Enlightenment thought in Northern Europe and Russia. The event is a continuation of previous "Northern Light" symposia.

This time the theme will be "History and Enlightenment", and the symposium will be held in the Finland House in St. Petersburg  in August 29. and 30. The location is in the very centre of classical St.Petersburg, near the Nevsky Prospekt. The address is 8, ul. Bolshaya Konyushennaya. For details, see the web page: http://www.instfin.ru/.

The previous Enlightenment symposia were held in Helsinki in 2009 and 2012. The papers of the first symposium have been published, and an electronic version can be downloaded from the address http://ideashistory.org.ru/a36.html. The papers of the 2012 symposium will be published soon.

The Enlightenment symposia are held annually in context of the Aleksanteri Institute's CoE project "Problems of Russian Modernization", and aim at analysing the initial states of the modernization processes in the 1700's both in Northern Europe and Russia. For more information about the CoE project in general, see the web page www.helsinki.fi/aleksanteri/crm/index.html (the Enlightenment symposia are part of Cluster 5).

There is yet room for some papers. In case you are interested to deliver a presentation, please contact the organiser Vesa Oittinen (vesa.oittinen at helsinki.fi). The language of the symposium is English, but papers in German and French are possible, too. The presentations will be published in the same series as the previous symposium materials.

Dead-line for submisssions is May, 30.

Call For Papers: The Political Economy of the Commons
(Seminar at the University of Helsinki 25th May 2013)

In the past two decades the commons has become a widely debated concept within various academic disciplines, such as environmental studies, social sciences, law and political economy. The commons has also become a central part of the vocabulary of contemporary social movements.

The commons is often seen as an alternative to ”the market economy”, as well as the capitalist mode of production and its core element, the commodity form. The abundant logics of network commons, apparent for instance in open code and varieties of peer-to-peer production, would thus stand in an antagonistic relationship to commodification of knowledge by means of copyrights and patents. It has also been argued, for example, that new commons can be identified when non-commodified social relations are strengthened through arrangements such as collaborative consumption and participatory budgeting.

On the other hand, it can be argued that the future of capitalist societies will depend on the appropriation of the production of the commons. In this case the commons is not seen so much as an alternative to but more as a consolidation of capitalism. For example the post-Fordist organisation of work can embrace autonomy, democracy and commons-based production, but it is also constantly coming up with new ways to capture and commodify the value produced from the commons.

We welcome papers that aim to engage with these already existing divergent debates on the commons, as well as ones proposing new critical perspectives on the political economy of the commons. We are also interested in questions on the relationships between the commons and democracy, social movements, nation states and world politics. Possible themes could include, but are not limited to, the following theoretical questions:

- What is / how to define the common/s?

- What is the relationship between enclosure and the commons?

- How are the concepts of value and the commons related?

- What distinguishes the commons from the public and the private?

- What are the historical specificities of commons-based production and how does it differ from the capitalist mode of production?

- How are the commons produced within networks, communities, metropolises or social movements?

- What is the meaning of the commons for the future of world politics?

- What is the role of the commons in building sustainable futures?

The event will take place as a part of Professor Teivo Teivainen’s research seminar on Global Capitalism on the 25th of May 2013. The keynote speech will be given by Professor Tere Vadén from Aalto University.

Abstracts of no more than 200 words should be sent to Tero Toivanen (tero.toivanen at helsinki.fi). The deadline for the abstracts is 18th of April 2013. The seminar is co-organised by the Department of Political and Economic Studies of the University of Helsinki and the Commons.fi online journal.

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: Literary Fiction and Rationality
University of Tampere, Finland
30-31 May 2013

Plenary Speakers are:
Garry Hagberg (Bard College)
Elisabeth Schellekens (Durham University)
Kathleen Stock (University of Sussex)

Abstract submission deadline: 15 February 2013

Literature gives us a unique opportunity to examine persons and their lives. For example, literature may be seen as illuminating rationality and the different kinds of reasons that agents have for their actions, beliefs, and judgements. It also enables us to examine rationality as a property of a person, and reasons as constituted by the context of a person’s life narrative. Literature may also be considered a source of empirical, moral, and aesthetic reasons and beliefs. The purpose of this conference is to critically discuss these and other conceptions of the relation between literary fiction and rationality.

We welcome paper submissions for the two-day conference, to be held in Tampere, Finland, on May 30-31 2013. Topics to be discussed might include, but are not limited to:
- literature in the constitution of rationality
- literature and human agency & action
- irrationality in literature
- rationality, irrationality, and creativity
- rationality and literary interpretation

Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted by email to Hanne Appelqvist: hanne.appelqvist[at]helsinki.fi. They should include the author’s name, affiliation, contact information, and the title of the paper. Accepted papers will receive 35 minutes each (25 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion). The deadline for proposals is Friday 15 February 2013. Proposals will be considered by the conference committee:

Leila Haaparanta
Jukka Mikkonen
Jenni Tyynelä
Hanne Appelqvist

The conference is organized by the research project Judgment and Human Rationality, funded by the Academy of Finland. For further information, go to: http://www.uta.fi/yky/judgement.

MOVEMENT, AESTHETICS, ONTOLOGY
IV Annual Conference on the New Materialisms
16-17 May 2013, School of History, Culture and Arts Studies, University of Turku, Finland

New materialist approaches are increasingly announced, articulated, exercised and contested across a gamut of often entwining research fields from art theory, media studies and feminist philosophy to sociology, gender and sexuality research, and science and environmental studies. In addition to the cross-evolving discussions in these areas, there is growing need to consider the connections but also specificity of new materialisms in relation to many contemporaneous intellectual developments,
such as new forms of realism or post-human(ist) thought. Given these conditions, the fourth international conference on the new materialisms suggests that it is crucial to steer clear of “a manifesto quality” when arguing for the distinctiveness and cutting-edge relevance of new materialist approaches, a risk perceptively noted by Barbara Bolt (2013). Instead, theorists and practitioners involved in this endeavour need to inquire with insistence, rigour and creativity what might be the distinguishing concepts of new materialisms, accompanied by associated problems, theoretical inspirations, methodological choices, and socio-political, ethical significances.

To encourage inquiries of this kind, the conference at the University of Turku invites scholars and postgraduate students of wide (trans-)disciplinary diversity to submit proposals for 20 minute presentations and for panels of maximum four papers in reference to three concepts. Variations of them seem to inform much of the research done in the name of new materialisms or linkable with these approaches. The concepts are movement, aesthetics, and ontology. Far from serving as prescriptive closures to what new materialisms involve, the concepts are offered here as condensation points of concerns that incarnate very differently depending on the context in which they are engaged. Yet, they are among the notions that arguably bring substance and consistency to new materialist modes of thinking and intervention – in ways both currently manifest and yet to be discovered. Movement pertains, for example, to the primacy given in many new materialist pursuits to process, emergence and the vibrancy of matter, whereas aesthetics may refer to the importance of sensation, affect, inter-/amodality or new sense- and feeling-based conceptions of politics. Ontology implicates a range of neomaterialist themes and affiliations from nature–culture continua to non-representational thought.

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We look forward to receiving contributions of theoretical, empirical, practice-based and activist orientation that somehow explore, assess, elaborate or connect these concepts with regard to the formative stages, recent actualizations and future potential of new materialisms. The work of our distinguished keynote speakers is exemplary of the ways in which movement, aesthetics and ontology matter to and through new materialist examinations of the arts, the body, gender, technology, entanglements of materiality and sociality, and human–non-human relations.

Topics of the presentation and panel proposals may include, as well as go beyond, the following:
-continua of theory and practice; art and philosophy; material and social  -methodologies: how to study processes, relations, affect, the new?
-new or radical empiricism: how to take account of emergence and complexity?
-revisiting aesthetics and politics
-ontologies of art, object, sex, work, medium, etc.
-neomaterialist analysis of social mobilities, activism, and economies
-multisensory/intermodal movements of thinking and knowing

Confirmed keynote speakers
-Estelle Barrett (Communication & Creative Arts, Deakin University, Australia)
-Barbara Bolt (Victoria College of Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia)
-Patricia Pisters (Media and Film Studies, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
-Jukka Sihvonen (History, Culture & Arts Studies, University of Turku, Finland)
-Iris van der Tuin (Gender Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands)
-Cecilia Åsberg (The Posthumanities Hub: Gender Studies, Linköping University, Sweden)

Proposals for panels and individual papers
Abstracts should be sent in the following format:
(1) Title
(2) Presenter(s)
(3) Institutional affiliation
(4) Email
(5) Abstract (individual proposals: 200-300 words; panel proposals: general description of 150-200 words, 200-300 words for each paper)
Please use your surname as the document title. Abstracts for panels and twenty-minute presentations should be submitted as an email attachment to by Monday 4 February 2013. We are happy to consider both established and alternative presentation formats from academic papers to illustrations of artistic research practice, performance-talks, etc. We will advise all proposers of accepted presentations within two weeks of the deadline.


Attendance and accommodation
Attendance at this conference is free of charge. University of Turku cannot provide or book accommodation for presenters, but the conference website at
http://movementaestheticsontology.wordpress.com/ will include information about places to stay and lunch and dinner possibilities in Turku once notifications of acceptance have been posted.

PLEASE NOTE also the possibility to combine participation at the conference with attendance in the following seminar organized likewise in Turku: MATERIAL CONVERSATIONS: LANGUAGE, NATURE, POWER, Åbo Akademi University, Department of Social Sciences, May 15th, 2013. There is a separate registration for this event, for more information see: www.abo.fi/institution/en/materialconversations


This conference is associated with the following conference series:
-The international conference series on New Materialisms. The first conference ”New
Materialisms and Digital Culture” was held at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge in June 2010 and the second ”Naturecultures” at the Utrecht University in April 2011. The third conference ”Entanglements of New Materialisms” was organized by Linköping University in May 2012. The keynote speakers of these events have included, among others, Stacy Alaimo, Donna Haraway, Vicki Kirby, Adrian MacKenzie and Anna Powell. This event is the 4th New Materialisms conference.

-Rethinking Art Studies (REARS) conference series. The first conference ”Regulated Liberties: Negotiating Freedom in Art, Culture and Media” was held at the University of Turku in August 2009. Keynote speakers included Bracha Ettinger, Brian Massumi and Tiina Rosenberg. This event is the 2nd REARS conference.

Call for Papers: Women, Truth, Action, An International Conference in Philosophy
10–12, October, 2013, University of Helsinki, Finland

Keynote Speakers include: Lena Halldenius (Sweden), Sally Haslanger (USA), Alice Pugliese (Italy), Lanei Rodemayer (USA) and Charlotte Witt (USA)

We hereby invite abstracts for papers to the forthcoming conference Women, Truth, Action, at the University of Helsinki. The conference will focus on three fields and themes informed by the gender perspective: phenomenology (“Subject, Body, World”), contemporary metaphysics (“Meaning and Objectivity”), and politics (“Action and
Change”). The conference is motivated by the fact that in all these fields women philosophers work with excellent results and with innovative approaches. We wish to bring together women scholars from different philosophical traditions – analytic and continental – as well as from history of philosophy so that they can share their insights on common topics of interest and establish a dialogue across dividing lines that mainly are dogmatic and seldom beneficial for female scholars.

We welcome proposals from senior researchers as well as from graduate students. Proposals should consist of a suggested title and an abstract (max. 400 words). Proposals will be blind reviewed. Please, provide the title of the paper, your name, affiliation and contact information in the cover letter. Remember to give the same title in the abstract and in the cover letter!

Deadline for submission: April 1, 2013. Submitters will be notified of the decisions by May 1, 2013.

To submit a proposal, send it as an email attachment and with a cover letter to Virpi Lehtinen (virpi.lehtinen at helsinki.fi). Please, include the title of the proposal also to the covering letter. Ensure that the subject line of the email reads: WTA 2013 Proposal.

Organizers: Sara Heinämaa’s Project Ethics of Renewal (HCAS, UH, AF) and The Association for Women and Feminist Philosophers in Finland (NFY)

Sponsors: Finnish Cultural Foundation, Subjectivity, Historicity and Communality (SHC), Philosophical Psychology, Morality and Politics Research Unit (PMP)

Organization Committee: Virpi Lehtinen, Sara Heinämaa, Martina Reuter, Erika Ruonakoski and Sanna Tirkkonen (University of Helsinki)

For more information: http://www.helsinki.fi/erbm/events/WTA2013.html

Conference: The Metaphysics of Culture - The Philosophy of Joseph Margolis
Helsinki, Finland
20-21 May 2013

Joseph Margolis’ philosophical career stretches over several decades. A major figure of contemporary pragmatism, he is especially known for his systematic defense of relativism and for emphasizing the historical character of human thinking and inquiry.

This conference is devoted to the different aspects of Margolis’ vast philosophical work and its contemporary relevance. Its keynote speakers are Joseph Margolis and Christopher Hookway.

The event is organized by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, The Philosophical Society of Finland, The Finnish Society for Aesthetics and the Nordic Pragmatism Network.

The organizers invite paper proposals to the conference programme. Please send an abstract of 400-500 words to by 31 January 2013. The organizers reserve the right to select presentations based on interest and suitability to the overall conference theme.

For more information and the full call for papers, please see the conference webpage at:
http://www.nordprag.org/moc.html

CALL FOR PAPERS
Literary Fiction and Rationality
University of Tampere, Finland
30-31 May 2013

Plenary Speakers are:
Garry Hagberg (Bard College)
Elisabeth Schellekens (Durham University)
Kathleen Stock (University of Sussex)

Abstract submission deadline: 15 February 2013

Literature gives us a unique opportunity to examine persons and their lives. For example, literature may be seen as illuminating rationality and the different kinds of reasons that agents have for their actions, beliefs, and judgements. It also enables us
to examine rationality as a property of a person, and reasons as constituted by
the context of a person’s life narrative. Literature may also be considered a source of
empirical, moral, and aesthetic reasons and beliefs. The purpose of this conference is to critically discuss these and other conceptions of the relation between literary fiction and rationality.

We welcome paper submissions for the two-day conference, to be held in Tampere, Finland, on May 30-31 2013. Topics to be discussed might include, but are not limited to:
- literature in the constitution of rationality
- literature and human agency & action
- irrationality in literature
- rationality, irrationality, and creativity
- rationality and literary interpretation

Abstracts of up to 500 words should be submitted by email to Hanne Appelqvist: hanne.appelqvist[at]helsinki.fi. They should include the author’s name, affiliation, contact information, and the title of the paper. Accepted papers will receive 35 minutes each (25 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion). The deadline for proposals is Friday 15 February 2013. Proposals will be considered by the conference committee:

Leila Haaparanta
Jukka Mikkonen
Jenni Tyynelä
Hanne Appelqvist

The conference is organized by the research project Judgment and Human Rationality, funded by the Academy of Finland. For further information, go to: http://www.uta.fi/yky/judgement