The European Research Council funded project ‘Better Understanding the Metaphysics of Pregnancy’ (BUMP) is delighted to invite submissions for a conference to be held at King’s College London from Friday 25th to Sunday 27th of October 2024.

The BUMP project has been running since 2016, under the leadership of Professor Elselijn Kingma. Its aim was to launch the metaphysics of pregnancy as an important and fundamental area of philosophical research. This workshop will mark the conclusion of the project, and look towards the future.

The theme of the workshop is ‘The metaphysics of pregnancy and beyond’. The main focus of this workshop willbe metaphysical or ontological questions related to pregnancy, parenthood and childbirth; however, we also invite submissions which engage with metaphysical or methodological questions through the lens of ethics, epistemology and feminist philosophy, or that investigate the social, political and ethical context and/or consequences of such metaphysical questions. We aim for this workshop to be a launching pad for future paths of research in the field of the metaphysics of pregnancy, with a specific view to identifying new questions or avenues of inquiry which remain unaddressed in the existing literature.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• What is the metaphysical relationship between the foetus and the pregnant organism?

• What does mereology tell us about pregnancy, and vice versa?

• Does the foetus bear any necessary or essential relation to the pregnant organism?

• When does a new organism, or a new entity that will later be an organism, emerge in the course of pregnancy?

• How does pregnancy bear upon the problem of biological individuality?

• How do traditional issues in the metaphysics of biology intersect with questions related to reproduction and child rearing?

• How does the metaphysics of pregnancy impact on its epistemology, particularly in the context of scientific research? And, vice versa, how do epistemic issues and scientific research bear upon metaphysical issues in pregnancy?

• What is the relationship between the metaphysics of pregnancy and distinctively feminist approaches to philosophy?

• How does the particular metaphysical organisation inherent to pregnancy affect phenomenologicalexperience? What implications are there for the kinds of knowledge one can have about pregnancy?

• How might particular views on the metaphysics of pregnancy affect ethical, social and political questions?

• What can historical and or sociological approaches contribute to our understanding of pregnancy itself or its dominant social and scientific depiction, and how does this impact the metaphysics of pregnancy?

• How does pregnancy intersect with the metaphysics of sex and gender?

Deadline: 6th of September

Please send abstracts of up to 500 words, prepared for blind-review, with ‘BUMP Workshop’ the subject line to PhilAndMed@kcl.ac.uk. Please note your affiliation/current position in the body of the email. 

We especially welcome submissions from postgraduate and early-career researchers, researchers in clinical/empirical fields, as well as from women and other groups underrepresented in philosophy. We will cover accommodation as well as meals, and have bursaries available for reasonable travel (subject to request).