ISEE-Europe

ISEE-Europe is the European division of ISEE, focused on supporting and bringing together scholars in Environmental Ethics and related fields who are based in Europe. ISEE-Europe (ISEE-E) provides a space for mutual support, collaboration and research exchange, and regularly organises events such as research and network meetings, seminar series and conferences. Join the network and subscribe to our mailing list to receive updates on European ISEE events (see below)!

“After the Anthropocene? Dialogues on Ecological Ethics and Planetary Futures” carries multiple meanings and invites a multifaceted engagement with the phenomenon of the Anthropocene. Ecological Ethics and Planetary Futures refer to interwoven fields of research and debate that bring ethical reflection on human–nature relations into dialogue with interdisciplinary inquiry: In a shared planetary perspective they strive to elaborate possible and desirable futures for all living beings. The Anthropocene diagnosis itself draws attention to the scale of human influence on Earth’s living systems. Its ethical significance extends beyond debates over formal geological classification. At the same time, references to humanity as a planetary agent risk obscuring unequal contributions to ecological degradation, unequal exposure to harm, and differences in the power to shape change.
The phrase After the Anthropocene? therefore remains deliberately open. It can refer to possible planetary futures, to a critical reassessment of the Anthropocene concept, or to ways of relating to nature that already challenge dominant practices. It neither presupposes a new geological epoch nor assumes that human impacts can simply be undone. The conference asks how ecological ethics can assess these possibilities and guide action amid ecological disruption and uncertainty.
We welcome critical engagement with proposals such as the Symbiocene, pluriversal approaches and convivial conservation, as well as rights of nature, Planetary Health and technological responses to ecological crises. Bringing ecological ethics and the environmental humanities into dialogue with the philosophies of nature, biology and technology, the conference will examine their normative foundations, practical implications and limitations.
Conference venue is the venerable Museum Koenig in Bonn, a wonderful place full of natural treasures, knowledge of nature, love for nature, and environmental education.
The ISEE Business Meeting and a guided tour of Europe’s largest specialist bioethics library will take place on the premises of the Institute for Science and Ethics (IWE) and the German Reference Centre for Ethics in the Life Sciences (DRZE), located in the heart of Germany's largest contiguous Gründerzeit neighborhood.
Optional program activities include a guided tour exploring the museum’s natural history collections exclusively for conference attendees and an expert-led excursion to the wilderness area of the Siebengebirge, situated within the beautiful scenery of the Rhine Valley.