Call for Papers: De Ethica Special Issue: Crisis & Recovery: Ethics in Interdisciplinary Dialogue

2026-08-31

CALL FOR PAPERS

De Ethica Special Issue: Crisis & Recovery: Ethics in Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Publication 2027

CLOSING DATE FOR SUBMISSIONS: February 15, 2027

Topic Areas: Crisis and Recovery; Memory, Trauma and Commemoration; Semiotics and Ethics; Hope and Resilience; Political Ethics; Democracy and Peace; Forgiveness and Reconciliation; Environmental Ethics.

The editors of De Ethica are pleased to announce a special issue for 2027 on Crisis & Recovery: Ethics in Interdisciplinary Dialogue.

We live in troubled times. The refugee crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the crisis of liberal democracies deeply affect individuals, societies, and the environment on many levels. This special issue aims to engage with the ethical aspects of crises and recovery through ethical dialogue. In this dialogue, we emphasize conversations with memory studies and semiotics, as these belong to academic fields highly relevant to ethical reflection on crisis and recovery.

At the same time, the call for papers welcomes a wide spectrum of perspectives and approaches on crisis and recovery from Europe and worldwide – whether at the intersection of ethics, education, and resilience in facilitating recovery, or in current inquiries into recovery, healing, and forgiveness in theological as well as philosophical ethics.

Humanity has faced and recovered from many different crises in the past – war, terror, pandemics, and natural disasters. One could say that the human condition is one of crisis and recovery. Memory studies are one focus of how to deal with crisis, since they often examine post-catastrophe experiences, trauma, and witnessing, all of which are central to the ethics of memory. These studies address vital issues in today’s ethical and political debates, such as memory, trauma, identity, and power.

One aspect of the special issue will be to explore how memory studies contribute to understanding and shaping recovery for individuals and societies. What we remember and forget is shaped by the workings of signs in culture. How can the ethical dimension of the ‘semiosphere’ (Juri Lotman) be explored and modeled? How can we imagine and facilitate the recovery of a semiosphere affected by crisis?

From a more holistic perspective, this concerns not only humans and their culture but also all forms of life as characterized by semiosis. Thus, ethics and semiotics in dialogue address not only the ethical health of our culture as a semiosphere but also how humans affect nature and other forms of life. Alongside these examples of avenues for ethical dialogue, the special issue aims to examine crisis and recovery from a wide range of ethical perspectives. This concerns, among others, the very concept of crises – how they are defined, who defines them, and whether they are seen as a kairos, an opportunity, or a disaster. Just as central are the questions of recovery, reconciliation, and forgiveness, and how individuals and societies can move forward.

These are some of the questions that articles in this De Ethica issue can raise.

We invite submissions on questions and issues such as:

Ethical orientation in a world of multi-crisis
Democracy and justice in times of crisis
Climate crisis, the encyclical letter Laudato si’ and other theological and philosophical responses
Moral agency under pressure: Navigating times of crisis
Crises and recovery in theological-ethical perspective
Theological ethics, forgiveness and reconciliation
Crisis as opportunity and/or disaster
Never Again and the ethics of memory
Commemoration, memory and the sacred
Pedagogy, memory, and democratic debate
Ethics of education, resilience and recovery
Trauma theology and trauma-informed ethics
Semiotic/semioethic reflections on crisis and recovery
The sign ‘God’ between crisis and recovery

The deadline for submissions to the thematic issue is February 15, 2027. All submissions will undergo rigorous blind review. Submissions should be between 4,000 and 8,000 words in length.

For further information on submission requirements, formatting, and referencing style, refer to the Author Guidelines on the De Ethica website: https://de-ethica.com/about/submissions.

Manuscripts should be prepared for blind review and submitted via the De Ethica website at https://de-ethica.com/about/submissions.

De Ethica is committed to a prompt, author-friendly review process; in most cases, the editors will notify authors of their decision within three months.

De Ethica seeks to publish scholarly works at the intersections of philosophical, theological, and applied ethics. It is a fully peer-reviewed, open-access publication hosted by Linköping University Electronic Press. We are committed to making high-quality academic papers accessible to a wide audience.

De Ethica is published in cooperation with Societas Ethica, the European Society for Research in Ethics.

If you have any questions regarding research issues, contact the guest editors of this special issue: Prof. Thomas-Andreas Põder at thomas-andreas.poder@ut.ee and Prof. Johann-Christian Põder at johann-christian.poder@uni-rostock.de. You can also contact our Executive Editor, Dr. Martin Langby at executive.editor@de-ethica.se. For practical issues, please contact our Assistant Editor, Amanda Lindestreng at assistant.editor@de-ethica.se.

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