Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference
Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference 2025:
'Thinking intentionality'
20th-21st June 2025, University of Warwick (UK)
Conference venue: OC1.01, The Oculus, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Confirmed keynote speakers: Hanne JacobsLink opens in a new window (Tilburg University), Joseph SchearLink opens in a new window (University of Oxford)
Call for Papers
We are pleased to announce the seventh meeting of the Warwick Continental Philosophy Conference (WCPC) on "Thinking intentionality", to be held from 20.-21. June 2025 at the University of Warwick. The WCPC 2025 is a graduate conference that aims to explore the notion of intentionality which lies at the heart of philosophical inquiries into consciousness, meaning and representation, and which has played a central role in philosophical traditions of the past 150 years.
Since the notion of intentionality was famously coined by Brentano and taken up by Husserl, it has sparked controversies both in the tradition of analytic philosophy and the phenomenological tradition. Often understood as the characteristic of minds and mental states to be “about” something or “directed towards” objects, some philosophers have claimed that intentionality is an exclusive mark of the mental. Others have sought to expand this concept to encompass (for instance) situated, embodied, social, or material dimensions (as paradigmatically indicated by Heidegger’s “being-in-the-world” or Merleau-Ponty’s embodied intentionality). Moreover, we believe that the concept of intentionality can be fruitfully applied to thinkers of the philosophical tradition which, while they have not employed this notion themselves, can be read as proposing an account of intentionality. Also, we would like to explore how it can be utilised as a framework to approach systematic philosophical questions.
We invite submissions that engage with the concept of intentionality in relation to thinkers of the “continental” tradition (broadly conceived), including but not limited to phenomenology. We expressly invite contributions that engage in or foster dialogue between “continental” and “analytical” approaches, for instance by confronting thinkers across traditions with one another. In this vein, we also encourage speakers to emancipate from the peculiar idioms of their philosophers in favour of clarity and a “systematic” view on their arguments.
Depending on the number of high-quality submissions we will receive, we aim to arrange responses from faculty members for all graduate speakers. Each graduate speaker will have a time slot of about one hour which is broken up as follows: 30 minutes talk, 5 minutes response, 25 minutes discussion. Moreover, speakers will be invited to publish their paper in a special issue of Pli - The Warwick Journal of Philosophy.
Organisers:
Fridolin Neumann
Keigo Shimada
Submission Guidelines
Your submission should include:
- a paper that is suitable for a 30 minute presentation (anonymised)
- a short CV (max. two pages)
Please send your documents to the WCPC committee at wcpc@live.warwick.ac.uk by 31.03.2025. Please use “WCPC 2025 submission” as the subject of your email and name your submitted paper as follows: WCPC_short_title (e.g.: WCPC_Husserlian_intentionality).
The term "graduate conference" need not be taken in a strict sense. We also welcome submissions by researchers who obtained their PhD in recent years.
Summary of Dates
31st of March 2025 - deadline for paper submission
20th-21st of June 2025 - conference dates
Additional information
The WCPC is an annual event within The Centre for Research in Post-Kantian European Philosophy (University of Warwick). The conference complies with the BPA/SWIP guidelines for accessible conferences, the BPA/SWIP good practice scheme for gender equality, and the BPA environmental travel scheme (ETS).