Theme: Perspectives on Environment and Time

The 19th annual summer meeting of the International Society for Environmental Ethics will convene from Wednesday, 29 June to Saturday, 2 July 2022, at Seili island, Finland, situated in the Finnish Archipelago.  The ISEE 2021 meeting was originally scheduled for this location, then moved to virtual format due to the pandemic.  The local organizers have graciously offered to host an in-person meeting in Finland (conditions willing!) in summer 2022.

This call for papers invites 500-word (maximum) proposals for presentations in any topic in environmental philosophy. Proposals may include references, which are not included in the word count.  We particularly encourage proposals for talks concerning issues related to the conference theme, perspectives on environment and time.  Papers related to this theme might consider conceptions of time and their relationship to environmental philosophies; ethical and philosophical questions related to past, present, and future generations; issues associated with complex socio-ecological histories, including histories of racism, colonialism, militarism, displacement, and their relations to environmental ethics; questions of species loss, restoration, rewilding and de-extinction; ecological and social reparations; conceptions of sustainability; imagined futures and futurisms; implications and contestation associated with conceptions of the Anthropocene; or issues of time in relation to global climate change.

Meeting Venue: Seili Island, Finland

The meeting is hosted in a place which – like many places – has a complex and layered history.  Seili Island’s dark history includes a period from the 1600s to the late 1700s during which it served as a hospital where people with leprosy – many of whom were brought forcibly – were isolated from society.  Later, from the 1800s until 1962, Seili Island was the site of an asylum for people identified as suffering from mental illness – primarily women – who were kept in prison-like conditions.  After the asylum closed, the hospital and its utility buildings were turned over to the University of Turku, which opened the Archipelago Research Institute in 1964. 

The facilities of the Archipelago Research Institute will serve as the venue for the ISEE meeting, which will include opportunities to explore the history, culture, and ecology of the area. To reach the island and return to the mainland, we will share a two-hour ferry through the picturesque archipelago, departing from Turku city center.

For more information about the venue, see https://www.visitseili.fi/en/accommodation/

Submission Instructions

Proposals prepared for blind review should be submitted via email to Mikko Puumala mimapuu[at]utu.fi by December 31, 2021. Decisions will be announced by February 15, 2022. Draft papers for pre-read by conference participants will be due June 1, 2022.

For co-authored papers, please indicate in your cover email how many authors plan to attend the conference if the paper is accepted, and which author(s) will be presenting.

Please note that while we plan an in-person meeting, we are continuing to monitor the COVID-19 situation in Finland and throughout the world and will modify our plans if necessary.