CFP: EthicsLab 5th Anniversary Conference

Call for Panels’ co-organization, EthicsLab’s 5th Anniversary Conference
‘Ethics Centres and Epistemic Justice’
Yaoundé, Catholic University of Central Africa, June 10-15, 2024

Academic voices and knowledge from the so-called ‘Global South,’ especially from Sub-Saharan Africa, continue to be marginalized regarding access to and the production and distribution of knowledge. This marginalization affects almost all knowledge domains, including philosophy, business ethics, global health, etc., and contributes to the persistence of power imbalances. Negotiating epistemic justice, understood as enhancing opportunities for equitable participation in the knowledge economy, requires ethics centers across global spaces to commit to this vital task. We call for co-organizing panels whose topics are relevant to epistemic injustice and ethics and political theory more broadly to celebrate EthicsLab’s 5th anniversary. The aim is for each panel of 6 to include an equal number of African and non-African scholars and to be organized by at least one African-based and one non-African-based scholar working together. The conveners or co-organizers of panels are responsible for funding their panels. Conveners should aim to cover the expenses of 3 participants (which may include one of the conveners). We estimate 6000 euros should suffice for these purposes (cover travel, conference fee, and hotel), i.e., 2000 euros for each African-based panelist. The minimum conference fee, 500 euros, covers conference materials, all meals and local transportation for five days, and a gala dinner. Individual participation is also possible but very limited. Panels’ proposals should be sent to Mpho Tshivhase (University of Pretoria; [email protected]), Tim Meijers (University of Leiden; [email protected]), Brian Berkey (University of Pennsylvania; [email protected]), Thierry Ngosso (Catholic University of Central Africa, University of Maroua & University of St. Gallen; [email protected]) by March 15th 2024.  

This conference is organized to celebrate the 5 Year Anniversary Conference at the Ethics and Public Policy Laboratory (EthicsLab) at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé, Cameroon. EthicsLab is the first ethics center in sub-Saharan Africa and launched in March of 2019 with an international conference featuring scholars from across the African continent and the global academic community. The 5-Year Anniversary Conference will take place in June of 2024, and the aim is to bring together once again a large group of scholars from Africa and the rest of the world to discuss issues related to epistemic justice, but also to ethics and political theory more broadly.

The central goals of EthicsLab include supporting African scholars working on ethical and public policy challenges facing the Central African region and the continent more broadly, thereby increasing the voice and influence of African perspectives in moral and political theory at a global level.

The conference aims to provide an opportunity for academics worldwide to engage with many talented scholars from across the African continent and vice versa. There is far too little interaction of this kind, and the conference represents one way EthicsLab aims to facilitate more of it. The launch conference in 2019 began this effort and was a major success in this regard.

The ambitious plan for the conference is to hold 4-5 keynote talks, including at least two by prominent African scholars, as well as a variety of panels organized by participants who have taken the initiative to construct them (rather than directly by us). The aim is for each panel to include an equal number of African and non-African scholars, and to be organized by at least one African and one non-African scholar working together. The hope is that this dispersed organization model will ensure inclusive representation of scholars from many geographical locations, with a range of perspectives, and working on a wide variety of topics.