The feminist and socially engaged turns in analytic epistemology and philosophy of language have witnessed a surge of interest in the moral-political connotations of our epistemic and communicative practices. As a result, ideas such as that agents are liable to suffer distinctively epistemic injustices; that social power permeates and shapes the epistemic environment; that our discursive-interpretive practices are sites of inequality and exclusion; that social and political institutions may reproduce wrongful epistemic dynamics — are nowadays familiar and entrenched.

Within the ever-expanding literature on injustice, wrongs and harms in the epistemic and discursive spheres, however, several lines of inquiry remain under-developed:

Phenomena known as epistemic injustices are theorised as forms of wronging. Discussion of the nature and shape of the wrong or wrongs involved, however, has been sporadic and limited in scope — with attention often restricted to interactional variants of the phenomena of interest (Fricker 2007, 2015; Pohlhaus 2014; Congdon 2017; Pynn 2021; Altanian 2024; Pettigrew 2025).

• What does the wrongfulness of epistemic injustice — including but not limited to its testimonial/interactional variants — consist in?
• How may different analyses of the wrongmaking features of epistemic injustice, in its various instantiations, inform and ground proposals for ameliorative intervention?

Talk of injustice, as it manifests in ‘ordinary’ contexts of epistemic exchange and discursive interaction, is widespread. Alongside the long-standing focus on the interpersonal sphere, increasing attention is being paid to the role of different social, cultural and political institutions in perpetuating dynamics of epistemic exclusion, entrenching inequalities of epistemic opportunity, compromising the exercise of individual and group agency (Jenkins 2017, Carel&Kidd 2021, Lupin and Townsend 2021, Lackey 2023, Blomfield forthcoming). Far less discussed, by comparison, are questions as to the prescriptive consequences of such diagnoses, on the one hand; and, on the other, as to the aptness, benefits, limitations of the liberal idiom-cum-paradigm of in/justice as a source of diagnostic support and normative guidance.

• What are the peculiarities of institutionalised forms of epistemic and/or discursive injustice?
• Do assessments of injustice in the interpersonal domain generate specific demands on social and political structures and institutions?
• What might amelioration look like, on either the interpersonal or institutional level?
• What do we gain (or lose), descriptively and/or prescriptively speaking, by conceptualising the target phenomena from different ethical-political perspectives (e.g. as failures of care vs rights violations; as freedom-reducing or equality-reducing; etc)?

Ameliorative concerns, broadly understood, are central drivers of the conceptual ethics and engineering literatures. It is natural to think that such concerns, and projects, could be fruitfully harnessed to the objective of addressing hermeneutical injustices. But there has been surprisingly little discussion of this idea, and more generally of the potential for mutually beneficial collaboration between the literatures on conceptual engineering & ethics on the one hand, and hermeneutical in/justice on the other (Maitra 2018, Falbo 2022, Delgado&Picazo 2026).

• How should the possibility of collaboration between these literatures be framed and explored? Is hermeneutical injustice best understood as one domain of application for conceptual engineering, or do the two literatures stand to benefit from a more genuinely reciprocal exchange?
• What challenges arise in coordinating the different concerns, aims, and normative commitments that animate these two literatures? For instance, might there be a tension between conceptual engineering’s focus on the instrumental adequacy of conceptual tools and hermeneutical injustice’s concern with the social and procedural conditions under which such tools are shaped?

The conference aims to host contributions speaking to any of the above issues, or that more generally push extant discussions of epistemic and discursive injustice in novel and thought-provoking directions. Speaking slots will be around 40 + 20 minutes long.

Limited financial support may be available for those who lack institutional funds, though this will need to be confirmed.

Abstracts of up to 700 words (maximum; references excluded) should be sent to epistemicwrongs@gmail.com by 3 July 2026 (03/07/2026).

Please ensure:

• That your email bears the subject line “Epistemic Wrongs Submission”;
• That your abstract is prepared for anonymised review, and is attached as a PDF file to your email;
• That your email includes a second PDF file, bearing: (a) your full name, (b) institutional affiliation, (c) title of your abstract/talk, (d) preferred email address for contact; (e) whether you would need financial support, if available.

Decisions will be communicated by 15 July. Informal enquiries should be addressed to the conference organisers at epistemicwrongs@gmail.com.

Conference dates: 9–10 September 2026.

Conference venue: NOVA Institute of Philosophy — IFILNOVA, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal.

INVITED SPEAKERS

Havi Carel
Richard Pettigrew
Claudia Picazo (TBC)
Leo Townsend & Dina Lupin

The conference is supported by the Foundation for Science and Technology (Fundação para a Ciência e para a Tecnologia) of the Portuguese Ministry of Education and Science under the project CORES — Communicative Paths to Righting Epistemic Wrongs (ref. 2023.14900.PEX).