The organization of the twelfth edition of the Iberian Meeting on Aesthetics invites researchers in philosophical aesthetics and in related disciplinary areas to submit proposals for papers. The submission of abstracts will be open until April 1st.
Dates & Venue
The Meeting will take place on October 22, 23, and 24, 2026, with institutional hosting by the Institute of Philosophy of the University of Porto, Research Group Aesthetics, Politics and Knowledge (APK).
Theme: Modalities of Attention: Contemplation, Critical Virtues, and Agency
One of the problems of our contemporary world is that of attention: paying attention to things requires time and energy, resources increasingly mobilised almost exclusively for consumption or incessant productivity. The sweeping technological and cultural transformations we face — or are imposed upon us — are accompanied by equally profound changes in how we attend, how we experience things, and even how we conceive of and value attention and experience themselves. This concerns our practical life, as much as it does aesthetic theory.
Although contemporary aesthetics goes beyond the experience of art, encompassing our relation to a degraded natural world and to an everyday life that is ever more massified, gentrified, and touristified, attention is the knot in which all these strands converge. Thus, a fundamental and enduring value of at least some works of art lies in their capacity to show us new ways of attending to things and of reconfiguring our experience of the world.
As a philosophical concept, aesthetic attention has been the object of debate and, in particular, of incisive criticism across various traditions of thought. Whatever perspective we adopt on the nature of aesthetic value and its role in human well-being, what we attend to, and how we attend, will continue to be a decisive aspect of what it means to be the subject of a life.
We invite researchers in aesthetics and the theory of the arts to submit proposals for papers within the following thematic lines:
THEMATIC LINES
- How art teaches us to see and to listen: aesthetics and the education of the senses.
- Attention as action: authorship, interpretation, and completion.
- Affective attention: the role of emotions in aesthetic experience.
- Attention and memory: the role of memory in aesthetic experience.
- The prosaic and the mundane: aesthetic attention beyond art.
- Aesthetic attention and the environment: from contemplation to the construction of nature.
- Architecture, urbanism, and aesthetic attention: life in cities and the experience of dwelling.
- Aesthetic attention in education: philosophical perspectives.
- Technology and politics: challenges to aesthetic attention, from hyperconnectivity to AI.
- From aesthetic attention to critical attention: whatever became of the philosophy of art criticism?
- Aesthetics and virtues: contemporary aretaic perspectives on attention.
- From Critical Theory to the present: the political dimension of aesthetic attention.
- Popular culture: from collective protest to memes.
- Digital art and new media: dispersion, fragmentation, and recentring.
- Aesthetics and epistemology: are there collective forms of aesthetic attention?
- Transcultural perspectives: aesthetic attention in non-Western contexts.
ABSTRACTS
Document 1: anonymous
- Title of the proposal
- Abstract (maximum 500 words)
- Bibliography (maximum of five references)
- Five keywords and the thematic line to which the proposal is assigned
Document 2: non-anonymous
- Title of the proposal
- Brief biographical note of no more than 200 words
Instructions for sending:
Both documents (Word) will be named with the title – or a part of it – plus its corresponding numbering (Example: Title_1 and Title_2, depending on whether it is anonymous or not) and will be sent to the following e-mail address: encontroibe.porto@letras.up.pt
Important information:
The selection will be made taking into account the scientific quality and the relevance to the theme of the Meeting.
The presentation time for each paper will be 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for discussion.
The official languages will be Portuguese, Spanish, and English.
IMPORTANT DATES
- April 1: Deadline for submission of abstracts
- From May 15: Acceptance reply
- May 30 – June 30: Speaker registration
- July 15: Program announcement
- Until September 30: Attendee registration
- October 22-24: Congress date
See the full Call for Papers here and find the information in Portuguese and Spanish.