Feminism and the Corporation: Radical Metaphysics, Radical Politics?

A two-day workshop on feminist philosophy, social ontology and the corporation. The workshop forms a part of the ERC grant Corporate Moral Progress, and will take place at Trinity College Dublin. 

Invited Speakers

Jade Fletcher (St Andrews)

Carol Gould (CUNY)

Naïma Hamrouni (UQTR)

Vanessa Wills (George Washington)

Workshop Summary

Feminist philosophy has gone from strength to strength in recent years, with feminist work on social ontology and power asking us to rethink our very understanding of the social world. However, one relative lacuna in this growing field has been feminist work on the corporation. With philosophers like Åsa Burman urging emancipatory metaphysicians to engage with the ‘economic base’ alongside work on traditional topics like gender and race, this conference seeks to find ways to begin to fill that gap. In a world where corporate domination is near-universal, where platforms like Google are rapidly entrenching a new (and potentially post-capitalist) ruling class, and where corporate power has helped to give rise to increasingly fascist national governments around the world, the need for feminist theorisations and critiques of the corporation has never been more urgent.

Suggested topics for papers at the conference include (but are by no means limited to): 

• What would a feminist metaphysics of the corporation look like?

• How does a feminist analysis contribute to our understanding of corporate power?

• What can the Marxist feminist tradition tell us about our contemporary moment?

• Do recent transfeminist accounts of social reproduction give us new ways of analysing our relationships to corporations?

• How should we think about ideology and the corporation?

• Can the corporation as a social form be a site of moral progress?

• Is there a nonideal social ontology of the corporation?

• Can corporations have genders?

• What does the corporation look like in a technofeudal world?

• Can the corporation care?

We invite submission of abstracts of no more than 750 words. Submissions should be sent to [email protected] 

The deadline for submissions is March 9th 2026.

Accessibility

The planned location, Trinity Business School, is wheelchair accessible, and we are keen to provide for other disability accommodations - please let us know if we can make the workshop more accessible for you!