The Bulletin is a page where any and all members of ANPOSS can post information that they judge relevant to the community of researchers in the philosophy of social science, for example, calls for papers for journals or conferences, scholarships, jobs openings, etc. This information does not need to concern the Asian region exclusively, as long as it is relevant to researchers in philosophy of social sciences.
In order to post information, you need to be (or to become) member of ANPOSS and to send it as an e-mail (with or without attachment) to the following address:
anposs@proton.me
Call for Papers: Paideia and Humanitas: Rethinking the Past for a New Renaissance
ACIS Conference (Australasian Center for Italian Studies)
Beyond Disciplines: Reimagining Italian Studies
23-25 July 2026
Monash University City Campus, Naarm / Melbourne
In an age when the humanities face fragmentation, marginalization, and crisis, how can we reconstruct an expansive yet conceptually coherent view of the human? Drawing on methodologies from cultural anthropology and (micro)social history, we have come to recognize that for centuries “humanity” was surreptitiously identified with the white, privileged, heterosexual, colonizing man – set apart from the world in order to dominate it. Yet it would be a mistake to discard the very concept of the “human being” without first attempting -perhaps for the first time – to render it genuinely inclusive.
This panel turns to paideia and humanitas – the legacies of classical and Renaissance education – as resources for rethinking human dignity, our belonging within the web of life, and the role of the humanities in dialogue with science and technology. We invite scholars to reflect on how these traditions might inspire a new Renaissance for our time.
The past few decades have been particularly challenging for the humanities in Western countries – especially in the Anglo-American world – even before the most recent cuts to research and education funding. The differentiation – or rather, fragmentation – of knowledge fostered by the paradigm of Cultural Studies on the one hand, and by the intersectional anthropology underpinning these approaches on the other, has unintentionally – and paradoxically – contributed to the current crisis of the humanities.
This crisis has manifested itself both in the widening gap between the humanities and the sciences and in the growing skepticism toward a ‘full’ or ‘complete’ conception of the human. In many academic debates, such skepticism has uncritically fueled the popularity of the term post-human.
In contrast, ancient Greek culture conceived the ‘full’ sense of the human as attainable through an education understood as paideia. Unlike contemporary approaches that fragment human beings according to multiple identity markers – today’s intersectional categorizations of gender, culture, class, ethnicity, and so on – Greek paideia pursued a unified vision of human formation and a sense of wholeness and harmony with the cosmos. Such labels, while sociologically and legally significant, often lie at the root of both the “culture wars” that have polarized the West in recent years and the most violent reactions to them.
This panel on the relevance of classical education in the contemporary age seeks to explore how classical and Renaissance-inspired traditions of learning – Plato, Cicero, Dante, Petrarch, Marsilio Ficino, Erasmus, among others – can contribute to restoring a sense of humanitas: a shared and plural belonging that unites all individuals. We are particularly interested in investigating the historical shift toward a disenchanted perception of the world, and in re-examining the enduring possibility of re-enchantment as a vital ground for humanitas and for a renewed sense of belonging in our time.
Similarly, we welcome contributions on the political dimensions of paideia and its implications for redefining the common good in light of the current climate crisis. At the same time, this panel does not seek to oppose classical education to technology. On the contrary, it aims to offer conceptual tools for ‘humanizing’ technology itself. In this sense, it resonates with philosopher Nick Bostrom’s call – drawing on a deliberately Renaissance term – to reflect on “the dignity of the post-human” (In Defence of Posthuman Dignity, Bioethics, 19.3, 2005, pp. 202–214).
We welcome papers that address these themes within the general framework outlined above. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- the enduring significance of paideia in contemporary culture, education and politics;
- reinterpretations of humanitas and dignitas across history;
- Renaissance conceptions of the human’s place within the natural world, their complex relationship with processes of rationalization and instrumentalization, and their role as a counterweight through ideas of enchantment.
- classical and Renaissance models of the human in dialogue with post-humanist perspectives;
- the role of the humanities in reshaping their relationship to science, technology, and AI;
- reflections on how classical traditions might guide a new Renaissance today.
Abstract submission: Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a short bio (max. 150 words).
Deadline for abstracts: November 23rd, 2025
Languages: Proposals are welcome in English or Italian.
Contact: Send submissions and inquiries to andrea_sartori1@outlook.it
Call for Abstracts: History and Philosophy of Science: Past, Present, and Future
24 – 26 June 2026
Academic Building, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Keynote Speakers
- Theodore Arabatzis (University of Athens, Greece)
- Uljana Feest (University of Hannover, Germany)
- Greg Radick (University of Leeds, UK)
- Alan Richardson (University of British Columbia, Canada)
Organising Committee
- Keith Chan
- Yafeng Shan (chair)
- Qinyi Wang
- Qiyue Zhang
Funders
Centre for Philosophy of Science, HKUST
The Asian Philosophy of Science Association
Conference Description
History and Philosophy of Science (aka HPS) emerged in the 1950s and greatly promoted the historical approach to the philosophy of science. Despite its rapid institutionalisation in the 1960s, HPS did not become a full-fledged academic discipline eventually. There have been axiological, institutional, methodological, and practical challenges. That said, some historically minded philosophers of science and philosophically minded historians of science never stop making efforts to promote the dialogue across the boundaries and develop HPS approaches (e.g. integrated HPS, HOPOS, and PHS). This conference aims to reflect on the nature, methodology, development, and prospect of HPS.
Contact
If you have any questions, please contact Qiyue Zhang (qiyue.zhang@connect.ust.hk).
Call for Papers: ENPOSS 2025
University of Venice Ca’ Foscari, Italy
10-12 September, 2025
Contact
If you have any enquiries or questions, please contact Qiyue Zhang (qiyue.zhang@connect.ust.hk).
Keynote Speakers
Stéphanie Ruphy (ENS Paris)
Muhammad Ali Khalidi (CUNY)
Call for Papers
The European Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ENPOSS) invites submissions to its 14th Conference. Contributions from all areas in the philosophy of the social sciences are encouraged as well as submissions both from philosophers and social scientists.
Submissions
Contributions can be either individual papers or special-theme panels and must be submitted through an online submission system. Abstract submissions will open on January 15, 2025, and the submission link will be announced beforehand. Only one submission per person will be considered.
Submission opening: 15 January, 2025
Deadline for submission: 15 March, 2025
Notification of acceptance: 1 May, 2025
For individual paper submissions, an abstract between 800 and 1000 words suitably prepared for blind reviewing should be submitted.
For submission of a panel on a specific topic (including book symposia), comprising 3 to 4 papers, a single document must be uploaded. It must contain the panel title, the name of the organizer(s), the names of all contributing authors and titles of their papers, a general abstract of the panel’s topic (between 400 and 500 words), plus an abstract of every individual paper (between 500 and 600 words each).
Each submission, whether of an individual paper or a symposium, will be blindly reviewed by two members of the Scientific Committee.
Publication
Selected papers from the conference will be published in a special issue of the journal Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
Local Organizing Committee
Eleonora Montuschi, Matteo Vagelli (Chair)
ENPOSS Steering Committee
María Jiménez-Buedo (UNED, Madrid), Chrysostomos Mantzavinos (University of Athens), Eleonora Montuschi (Ca’Foscari University, Venice), Julie Zahle (University of Bergen).
Scientific Committee
Sonja Amadae, Emrah Aydinonat, Sina Badiei, Marcel Boumans, Giuseppina D’Oro, Roberto Frega, Mattia Gallotti, Matteo Giannasi, Marion Godman, Roberto Gronda, Francesco Guala, David Henderson, Caterina Marchionni, Malvina Ongaro, Eugenio Petrovich, Paul Roth, Nadia Ruiz, Yafeng Shan, Clémence Thebaut, Petri Ylikoski.
For more details, visit ENPOSS website: https://enposs.eu/
Call for Papers: ENU2024: Explanation, Narrative, and Understanding in the Social Sciences
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Hong Kong, June 25-27, 2025
Explanation has been one of the central issues in the philosophy of science. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in narrative and understanding. The significance of narrative in scientific practice was re-assessed, while the nature of scientific understanding has been extensively examined. Still, to a great extent, recent discussions on explanation, narrative, and understanding are framed in the context of the natural sciences, even though they all play important roles in social science research. This conference aims to examine the notions of explanation, narrative, and understanding in social science by bringing together philosophers and social scientists.The questions to be addressed include but are not limited to:
* What is understanding in the social sciences?
* Can the main accounts of scientific understanding be fruitfully applied to the social sciences?
* What role does narrative play in the social sciences?
* What is the relation of explanation, narrative, and understanding in the social sciences?
Submission Guidelines
Please submit a 500-word abstract for blind review via Easychair <https://easychair.org/cfp/ENU2025> by 31 December 2024 (https://easychair.org/cfp/ENU2025)
Organizing committee
* Keith Chan
* Fons Dewulf
* Giulio Ongaro
* Yafeng Shan (chair)
* Qinyi Wang
Invited Speakers
* Isaac Ariail Reed (University of Virginia)
* Paul. A. Roth (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Venue
The conference will be held in the Academic Building, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to Qinyi Wang (qwangdi@connect.ust.hk<mailto:qwangdi@connect.ust.hk>).
Call for Papers: Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable 2025
March 7-8, 2025, Emory University, Atlanta Georgia
We welcome extended abstracts (between 600-1,200 words) for papers on any topic in philosophy of the social sciences, especially those that tackle philosophical issues as they arise in, and are consequential for, practicing social scientists. We will assemble a two-day program of workshop-format sessions so that intensive discussion can be the focus of the meeting. Please email submissions to PSSRT2025@gmail.com no later than December 15, 2024. Abstracts should be blinded and attached to your email as a Microsoft Word document; please include your full name and affiliation in the accompanying email.
As always, papers in all areas of philosophy and social science are encouraged. Selected presentations will be published as articles in a special issue of Philosophy of the Social Sciences.
This year’s Roundtable will be run jointly with the Conference on Responsible Data, AI, and Social Systems. The conferences will share four plenary speakers: Michael Kearns (University of Pennsylvania), Anita Allen (University of Pennsylvania), Avrim Blum (Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago), and Debra Mayo (Virginia Tech).
New Book: Nathalie Bulle and Francesco Di Iorio (Eds). The Palgrave Handbook of Methodological Individualism (Two Volumes), Palgrave MacMillan, 2023.
While methodological individualism is a fundamental approach within the social sciences, it is often misunderstood. This highlights the need for a discursive and up-to-date reference work analyzing this approach’s classic arguments and assumptions in the light of contemporary issues in sociology, economics and philosophy. This two-volume handbook presents the first comprehensive overview of methodological individualism. Chapters discuss historical and contemporary debates surrounding this central approach within the social sciences, as well as cutting edge developments related to the individualist tradition with philosophical and scientific implications. Bringing together multiple contributions from the world’s leading experts on this important tradition of theorizing, this collective endeavor provides teachers, researchers and students in sociology, economics, and philosophy with a reliable and critical understanding of the founding principles, key thinkers and intellectual development of MI since the late 19th century.
“This is a truly heroic accomplishment. The two volumes provide a unique treasure of multifarious perspectives and insights into key issues in the ontology, epistemology and methodology of social sciences. This giant collection will be immensely useful for students and researchers alike.”
Uskali Mäki (University of Helsinki, Finland)
“This collection of essays represents a major and much needed academic achievement. For it brings together a wide ranging discussion on a topic—methodological individualism—that for too long has lacked any comprehensive, in depth, and scholarly treatment of the many dimensions this position touches in philosophy of social science. By assembling such an impressive array of scholars, Bulle and Di Iorio have provided all researchers and scholars in this area now and for the foreseeable future with a much needed resource, one destined to provide an authoritative voice for all those concerned with these critical debates.”
Paul A. Roth (University of California Santa Cruz, USA)
“This is a tremendous survey, both wide-ranging and original, a veritable mother lode of useful analyses, from some of the leading figures in the field. The editors are to be congratulated”.
Barry Smith (The State University of New York at Buffalo, USA)
To visit the publisher’s website, click here
New Book: Klarita Gërxhani, Nan de Graaf and Werner Raub (Eds.), Handbook of Sociological Science: Contributions to Rigorous Sociology, Edaward Elgar, 2023.
Available open access here.
The Handbook of Sociological Science offers a refreshing, integrated perspective on research programs and ongoing developments in sociological science. It highlights key shared theoretical and methodological features, thereby contributing to progress and cumulative growth of sociological knowledge.
Reflecting ‘unity in diversity’, chapters explore a wide variety of research fields, ranging from cultural capital, migration, social networks, gender inequality, historical sociology and ethnography to the intersection of sociology and the life sciences. Examining basic methodological standards for theory construction and empirical research, the Handbook exemplifies commonalities between research programmes within these fields.
The contributors also explore rigorous sociology related to theory construction, empirical research, and methods, including statistical modelling and the integration of theoretical and empirical research. Forward-thinking and original, the Handbook concludes by illustrating the common core of rigorous sociology, how it can contribute to understanding societal problems and to policy making, and how research into sociological science can continue to thrive in the future.
Accessible and engaging, this Handbook will be invaluable for scholars and researchers of sociology and sociological theory, research methods in sociology and social policy, and comparative social policy. Exploring new developments and applications, it will also act as a useful reference guide for policy makers. The Handbook will likewise be an important resource for teaching advanced courses and training graduate students.
New Book: Karl-Dieter Opp, Advanced Introduction to Social Movements and Political Protests, Edaward Elgar, 2022.
This Advanced Introduction is an accessible and critical review of the most important theories and concepts in the field of social movements and political protests. Karl-Dieter Opp precisely outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches and investigates how they can be unified into a structural-cognitive model.
‘This truly impressive book offers an integrated theoretical approach to social movements and political protests. Opp applies his approach to help our understanding of major events, past and present, like the spread of the Protestant Reformation, and protests against the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. A must-read for social scientists.’
– Sascha O. Becker, Monash University, Australia and University of Warwick, UK
‘Opp—one of our most insightful analysts of social protest—has produced a remarkably sophisticated and theoretically rich account of how protests work, focusing as much on how targets and publics react as on the mechanisms of protest participation. _is multi-sided approach opens new avenues for understanding social protests and their impact on diverse societies.’
– Jack A. Goldstone, George Mason University, US
‘This is a careful book on an important topic. It is well worth reading as it offers many new insights into a complex phenomenon with applications for current social issues, including wars.’
– Bruno Frey, University of Basel, Switzerland
To visit the publisher’s website, click here.
Call for Papers: The Craft of the Social Scientist in the Global Arena (Collective Book, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2023)
Editors: Vincenzo Cicchelli (Université de Paris, Ceped) & Isabelle Léglise (CNRS, SeDyL). Scientific project carried out on behalf of the Global Research Institute, Paris
For all correspondance: thecraftofsocialscientists@gmail.com
The significance of global interconnectedness as an important component for 21st-century social sciences has been broadly recognized in the vast literature originated by the Global studies (Featherstone, 1990; Castells, 1996; Beck, 1999; Albrow, 1997; Held et al., 1999) and that has emerged at the beginning of 1990s. The emergent and abundant nature of the Global studies can be seen in the proliferation of expressions that designate it: transnational approaches, world history, connected history, civilizational approaches, cosmopolitanism, world culture, cultural globalization etc. After forty years as part of the global academic vocabulary, the attempts to understand the increasingly interconnected realities in which human beings live have produced millions of pages of both theoretical and empirical research and countless is the number of books, readers, handbooks, companions, special issues, papers devoted to the high number of topics related to globalization.
This book aims therefore to present and discuss multi-scalar, multi-level and multi-sited methods commonly used to study the Global or its impacts. It will focus either on comparative objects that have major economic and cultural impacts or on issues, knowledge and goods that are left at the margin of globalization. Like the large field of research that is Global studies, these approaches are by definition multidisciplinary and simultaneously involve researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds and geographical areas. The book intends to discuss various possible approaches among which cosmopolitan sociology, connected history, world history, in light with the challenges posed, on one hand, by globalization and, on the other, the need of situated standpoints and knowledges claimed by feminist, postcolonial, decolonial, or post-western approaches for the last 30 years (Stoetzler and Yuval-Davis, 2002; Santos 2007; Mignolo 2000).
Timeline
Call for publication: March 2021 Submission of proposals (500 words maximum): end of September 2021 Answer to the authors: November 15th, 2021 First versions of the chapters (5000/7000 words maximum): early June, 2022 Remarks to the authors: end of September 2022 Second versions of the chapters: end of December 2022 Submission of the manuscript to Brill: Spring 2023 Date of publication: Fall 2023
Call for Papers: Synthese
Call for papers Synthese Topical Issue
Deadline: 4 April 2022
The meta-metaphysics of social ontology
Guest-Editors: Esa Diaz-Leon, Francesco Guala, Harold Kincaid, Raphaël Künstler
Our lives are oriented not only towards natural, but also social entities: Institutions, marriages, firms, classes, genders, races, and so on. The social sciences investigate how all these interact with each other and with individual people. Political struggles generally aim at transforming these social entities: What rules should govern a fair society? What are the legitimate constitutive parts of a marriage? How should different contributions to a firm be differentially compensated?
Despite their centrality to our ordinary, scientific, and political lives, social entities remain metaphysically mysterious. What are their fundamental constituents? Are social entities sui generis? How to locate these entities and their properties within the natural world? Should they be eliminated, reduced or regarded as primitive?
Social ontology is now a rapidly growing field of investigation, attracting the attention of more and more metaphysicians with very different approaches. To build a good social ontology, some authors think it suffices to rely on the standard tools of analytical philosophy: conceptual analysis, intuition, thought experiments, formalization, grounding. Others contend that social ontology should be informed by the social sciences. Still others argue that social ontology is a form of descriptive metaphysics, while others believe, that the specificity of social entities requires an “ameliorative conceptual analysis”. This increasing diversity of approaches raises a concern: if we cannot agree on how even to practice social ontology, our current efforts will be at cross-purposes.
Following Ross and Ladyman’s vigorous attack on traditional metaphysics in favor of a scientific metaphysics, meta-metaphysics itself has become a lively field of philosophical debate. Many ways of articulating science and metaphysics have been proposed: Among others, neo-positivist metaphysics, metaphysics as modeling, moderately naturalized metaphysics, and metaphysics as a kind of toolbox. The meta-metaphysical value of grounding theory is the topic of much discussion, but also the relation of metaphysical inquiry to common sense and normative (including religious) beliefs.
In short, it seems now both urgent and possible to discuss the ways meta-metaphysics can be applied to social ontology in order to help it to produce philosophically, scientifically and politically better results.
Appropriate topics for submission include, among others:
· Do current meta-metaphysical debates apply to social ontology? If yes, how? If no, why?
· What are the various kinds of social ontologies on offer?
· What is the relation between social ontology and the social sciences? Can social ontology help the social sciences to overcome their disagreements? Should social ontology be naturalized? If yes, how should this naturalization be conceived?
· Are descriptive social ontology and descriptive natural ontology methodologically identical? Can a social ontology be revisionist? If yes, what is the relation between descriptive and revisionist social ontologies?
· What is the relation between social ontology and political struggle?
· Can the conceptual and formal tools (supervenience, grounding, etc.) used in the philosophy of nature or in the philosophy of mind be applied also to social ontology?
· What meta-metaphysical lessons could be drawn from the history of social ontology and the social sciences?
· Many debates in social ontology, such as questions about the nature of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, and so on, are politically significant precisely because these human traits are the target of discrimination. Is this normative dimension of social ontology relevant with regards to questions about the meta-metaphysics of social ontology?
Manuscripts should be submitted via Synthese Editorial Manager: http://www.editorialmanager.com/synt between December 1, 2021, and April 4, 2022.
For further information, please contact Raphaël Künstler
raphael.kunstler [at] univ.tlse2.fr
Call for Papers: Philosophy of the Social Sciences
From time to time Philosophy of the Social Sciences publishes special issues or sections of issues. Characteristically these are a themed symposium, or a cluster of reactions to a recent book. These special issues are in addition to the regular publication of selections of papers from the meetings of the Roundtable, ENPOSS, and the ANPOSS. The initiative for these special issues and their execution comes from the organizers and they invariably act as guest editors, assuming all the duties normally carried out by the standing editors of the journal.
We draw attention to this in order to encourage scholars to consider making proposals to us for future special issues. All sorts of possibilities exist: surveys of the literature and assessments of progress or lack of it; new books and ideas; revisiting classics and classic debates. Here are few suggestions:
Does the programme of the Unity of Science survive other than as an historical artefact?
Why does naturalism get favourable treatment? Is it deserved?
What role does metaphysics play in the progress (or regress) of the social sciences?
What happens to refuted social theories? Do they really disappear or do they reappear in a ‘new and improved’ guise?
Are social technologies simply the application of social scientific theories that may or may not be true? Or are social technologies a source of genuine epistemological innovation?
Are there any philosophically deep lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic for our understanding of the role of expertise in democracies?
We ask colleagues interested in compiling materials for a special issue to send us a prospectus that indicates the central questions to discuss and the names of contributors. The organizers should be willing to referee and edit the materials on the table time to be agreed.
New Book: Gérald Bronner and Francesco Di Iorio, The Mystery of Rationality. Mind, Beliefs and the Social Sciences, Springer, Cham (2018)
CONTRIBUTORS: Joseph Agassi (Tel Aviv University and York University), Peter Boettke (George Mason University), Alban Bouvier (Institut Jean Nicod, ENS), Enzo Di Nuoscio (UniMol), Paul Dumouchel (Ritsumeikan University), Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis), Herbert Gintis (Santa Fe Institute), Ian Jarvie (York University), Roger Frantz (San Diego University), Daniel Little (University of Michigan-Dearborn), Pierre Livet (Aix-Marseille University), Leslie Marsh (University of British Columbia), Karl-Dieter Opp (Leipzig University and and University of Washington), Emmanuel Picavet (Sorbonne Paris 1 University)
OVERVIEW: Analysis of the concept of rationality is a leitmotiv in the history of the social sciences and has involved endless disputes. Since it is difficult to give a precise definition of this concept, and there is a lack of agreement about its meaning, it is possible to say that there is a ‘mystery of rationality’. What is it to be rational? Is rationality merely instrumental or does it also involve the endorsement of values, i.e. the choice of goals? Should we consider rationality to be a normative principle or a descriptive one? Can rationality be only Cartesian or can it also be argumentative? Is rationality a conscious skill or a partly tacit one? This book, which has been written by an outstanding collection of authors, including both philosophers and social scientists, tries to make a useful contribution to the debates on these problems and shed some light on the mystery of rationality.
For more information, click here.
Call for Papers: Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence – PJCV
Special Issue on Technology and Armed Forces (guest edited by Dr. Alexander C. Leveringhaus, University of Surrey).
For more information, click on the link below:
Asian Network for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (ANPOSS) 