CALL FOR PAPERS

‘Embodiment and History’ – BSP2024AC

Location: UWE Bristol

Confirmed dates: Wednesday 11th – Friday 13th September 2024

The UWE Philosophy team in Bristol is now seeking abstracts on the theme of ‘Embodiment and History’ for the 2024 BSP Annual Conference!

The ability for phenomenology to centre embodiment in philosophical analysis has been a significant draw for theorists and practitioners—increasingly in transdisciplinary areas, such as health and medical humanities. Phenomenology also continues to offer rich approaches to lived time, to history and normativity, and to generative accounts of culture and ethics—from conceptualising the dynamics of time-consciousness through to critical interventions on contemporary issues.

That phenomenology can span, integrate, trouble, unsettle, and renew our understanding of these experiential structures – embodiment and history – speaks to the exciting philosophical dialogues within the field today.

The British Society for Phenomenology Annual Conference is a longstanding and respected feature of the UK academic scene, providing a friendly and supportive forum for inter-disciplinary discussion. This year we are partnering with the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol, UK) to explore these questions together—a place reckoning with its own complex history and identity.

Abstracts:

We welcome papers across a broad range of areas. These include, but are not limited to:

• Phenomenology of history (historical memory, collective responsibility and personal guilt, time and timeliness, forgiveness, post-conflict trauma, transitional justice, responsibility for the future, etc.)

• Embodiment and normativity (gender, sexuality, race and racialisation, age, disability, colonial legacy, norms and movements, resistance and hesitation)

• Personal history and embodied health (medicine, medical humanities, physiotherapy, maternity, disability, end-of-life, etc.)

• Lived history and policy (education, environment, law, economics, politics and international relations, science and technology, etc.)

• History and Theory of Phenomenology (perception, the body, emotion and affect, ethics and morality, existentialism, philosophy of religion, phenomenological theology, philosophy of technology, etc.)

• We welcome submissions both from practitioners and philosophers (including both the European / Continental and Anglo-American / Analytic traditions). Submissions from postgraduate researchers are also encouraged.

Submission Advice and Process:

• We are an open and welcoming society, and our aim is to create a convivial, inclusive environment for audience engagement with phenomenology by philosophers and practitioners. So abstracts and papers should be composed with accessibility in mind.

• Each year – in addition to our keynote presentations – we seek to provide a space for 25-30 speakers in a single track. Papers should be 20 minutes long.

• At present, the conference is planned to be in-person only. The conference team will explore hybrid options, but those interested in submitting work should assume the conference will run in-person only at this stage.

• Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words, and you should also provide a short biography of no more than 100 words.

• We welcome panels of two to four papers. An abstract should be submitted for each paper, as well as biographies and contact details for all panel participants. See the advice on the Abstract Submission System.

Abstract Submission System:

The Abstract Submission System is now closed

Selection process:

• The deadline for the submission of abstracts is Tuesday 30 April 2024 (midnight BST).

• Abstracts will be blind peer reviewed by members of the BSP conference committee.

• Each year, we receive more abstracts of quality than for which we are able to provide space. From the shortlist, the review team selects what they believe to be the best of these for presentation during the event, with an eye to the aims and objectives of the conference, the society and its co-organisers and sponsors.

• We intend to inform participants if they have been successful on or around Tuesday 15 May 2024. Due to the quantity of abstract submissions, while we notify everyone on the outcome of their submission, we do not supply individual feedback on those which are unsuccessful.

More information and questions:

If you have any questions about the conference, please email: events@thebsp.org.uk

Organisation Committee led by:

Jessie Stanier, Chair of the BSP Annual Conference 2024; lecturer in philosophy, UWE Bristol.

Francesco Tava; associate professor in philosophy, UWE Bristol.

Niall Keane; senior lecturer in philosophy, UWE Bristol.

General registration information:

• The conference registration system will open soon after we inform participants of the outcome of their submissions

• The conference fee this year will be the same as 2023, with an early bird fee of £150.

• To attend BSP events, speakers and delegates need to be members of the British Society for Phenomenology. If you are not already a member, membership (full and discounted, £40 and £20 respectively) will be added to the conference fee. When you become a member, you receive access to the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology online for one year. JBSP Online publishes around 25 new research articles a year, and membership includes access to 50+ years of the JBSP. You can become a member at any time, for more information please visit our membership page.

• More general registration information coming soon…