Themes from Kate Vredenburgh: XAI, Fairness, the Future of Work

The Department of Philosophy and Political Science at TU Dortmund University and the Lamarr Institute for Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are delighted to announce the 2nd Dortmund Conference on Philosophy and Society, taking place on October 1–2, 2025, in Dortmund, Germany. The event will feature Kate Vredenburghfrom the London School of Economics, who works in the philosophy of social science, political philosophy, and the philosophy of technology, and who was recently awarded a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship for a project on the future of work. The first day of the conference will be reserved for up to six presentations from speakers selected via this call for papers. Kate Vredenburgh will be present to respond to the papers. She will also give a public evening lecture. On the second day, we will hold a student workshop on Vredenburgh’s work.

Conference Themes

The conference will engage with themes from Vredenburgh’s work, in particular philosophical perspectives on artificial intelligence (AI) and on the future of work. Concerning AI, Vredenburgh investigates the moral implications of the use of opaque AI systems in the institutions of our society, arguing for a right to explanation. She has developed an ethically informed picture of algorithmic bias, and proposed an account of how we should respond to such bias from the perspective of justice and fairness. She is also an advocate of a right to explanation in the context of AI, based on explanation’s relevance in protecting the possibility of informed self-advocacy. Regarding the future of work, Vredenburgh’s research focuses on the impact of AI on the workplace. She draws on egalitarian theories of justice and argues that AI should be deployed so as to enable more equality at work, and she maintains that opaque AI contributes to working conditions which undermine workers’ autonomy while alienating them from their work.

Call for Contributions

We invite scholars to submit papers for the first day of the conference. We welcome contributions on the topics sketched above, including, but not limited to:

• Explainable AI – perspectives from ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, and philosophy of science
• The right to explanation
• Algorithmic bias and algorithmic fairness
• The impact of AI on institutions
• The impact of AI on the future work

Contributions engaging with Vredenburgh’s are especially welcome, but we will also consider work on these topics more broadly.

Submission Guidelines

• Abstracts should be no more than 500 words, prepared for blind review.
• Submissions should be sent as PDF attachments to Paul Klur. Please use the subject line “CfP Vredenburgh”.
• The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2025.
• Limited funding may be available to cover travel and accommodation expenses for speakers who cannot otherwise finance these costs.

Organizing Committee

Florian Boge

Sara Mann

Chris Neuhäuser

Eva Schmidt