CFP: Pre-conference workshop: Values in science in the rest of the world

The idea that social, political and ethical values do and should influence science has become a mainstream position in philosophy of science. The main points of contention in the current discussion about values in science include identifying the right values, the right ways to manage their role in science, the right stakeholders to participate in the conversation, and the right methods for fostering public participation.

While this is a flourishing research programme, it overwhelmingly takes place in North America and Western Europe. And in the vast majority of it, the assumed societal context is an Anglophone democracy. This limits the kinds of values included in the discussion and the modes by which those values are considered. Some philosophers of science have recently started paying attention to this bias and the lacunae it creates, discussing, for instance, values in science in non-democratic contexts (Pulkkinen forthcoming 2026), science and democracy in light of theories of democracy that are not mainstream in anglophone academia (Hilligart & Wilholt forthcoming 2026), and the lack of philosophical discussions about scientific communities in subaltern regions (Gutiérrez Valderrama 2025). However, our understanding of the full consequences of this bias is currently limited.

The aim of this two-day workshop is to open up the discussion about values in science to include a broader range of values and approaches to value inclusion in science, with case studies from a wider set of geographical locations. Appropriate topics for submission include, but are not limited to:

• Scientists’ obligations when considering inductive risks in authoritarian societies.
• Public participation in science and the differences between deliberative approaches to negotiation and more consensus-based approaches favoured in many African contexts.
• Values in indigenous activist research and/or in research collaborations with indigenous people in countries that are not settler states.
• Policy-relevant research and collaboration with decision-makers in diverse political and legal systems.
• Standpoint epistemology and collaboration with minority groups in societal contexts where grounds on which group identities form and solidify are unclear.
• Values in science in democratic societies in light of diverse theories of democracy.

We invite 500-word abstracts to be submitted to [email protected] by March 20, 2026.

This is a pre-conference workshop just before ENPOSS 2026, the 15th Conference of The European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences.