Call for Abstracts 

Caring for Non-Humans: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Care among Animals, the Environment, and AI

12-14 October 2026, Prague, Czech Republic

Each of the conference’s three days will center on one of the core themes:

Caring for Animals
Keynote: Maneesha Deckha (University of Victoria, Canada)

Caring for the Environment
Keynote: Christine Hentschel (University of Hamburg, Germany)

Caring for AI
Keynote: Patrick Butlin (Eleos AI, UK)

What is the meaning of care in more-than-human worlds? How should we care for non-humans? How do non-humans care for each other and how do they care for humans? These questions stand at the heart of the conference Caring for Non-Humans, hosted by the Center for Environmental and Technology Ethics – Prague (CETE-P).

Care has long been an important concept in moral and political philosophy and has shaped debates in animal ethics, environmental thought, and science and technology studies. Yet discussions of care in relation to animals, ecosystems, and artificial intelligence tend to remain fragmented across disciplines. At the same time, growing ecological pressures, changing human–animal relations, and rapid technological development raise new practical and normative questions about how care should be understood and organized in increasingly entangled human, environmental, and technological contexts. This conference aims to provide a forum for addressing these questions in a systematic and interdisciplinary way. Concretely, the conference will examine what it means to think and practice care in relation to animals, the environment, and artificial intelligence. We will explore how caring relations are conceptualized and enacted across these domains, and how limited care resources might be allocated among diverse beings and systems.

Central questions include:

• What grounds obligations of care?
• Which moral, scientific, political, or practical considerations matter when needs compete?
• And how ought care be distributed when the interests of humans, animals, ecosystems, and artificial agents come into tension?

At the same time, we encourage reflection on care as a relational practice shaped by interdependence within more-than-human contexts:

• How do animals, ecological systems, and AI challenge prevailing assumptions about agency and moral standing?
• Who cares for whom, how, and under what conditions?
  
  

We welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines and methodological perspectives, including (but not limited to) philosophy, animal ethics, technology ethics, science and technology studies (STS), sustainable AI, environmental humanities, cognitive and social sciences, political theory, and art. We particularly encourage submissions from scholars and practitioners from underrepresented groups and from regions less visible in academic discourse. The event will be held in English, and we aim to create a collegial and inclusive atmosphere where participants from diverse backgrounds can engage in open and constructive discourse.

Submission details

Please submit the following materials to caringconferenceprague@gmail.com by April 30th 2026. Notifications will be sent out by early June 2026.

1.
An anonymized abstract of 250–500 words for blind peer review. Please use the following naming convention to title the file: Anonymous_Title of your contribution_Caring Conf

2.
A brief biography, affiliation, and contact details (maximum 100 words). Please use the following naming convention to title the file: Your Name_Title of your contribution_Caring Conf

Selected papers from the conference, if not previously published, will be considered for inclusion in a special journal issue or edited volume to be published with a reputable academic press. In case of questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to caringconferenceprague@gmail.

Organising team: Friderike Spang (CETE-P), John Dorsch (CETE-P)