Recording: Societas Ethica’s 62nd Annual Conference brought international discussion of crisis, recovery and the future of ethics to Tartu
From 20 to 23 August 2026, the University of Tartu hosted the 62nd Annual Conference of Societas Ethica, the European Society for Research in Ethics, under the title “Crisis & Recovery – Ethics in Interdisciplinary Dialogue”. For the first time in the Society’s more than 60-year history, its annual conference was held in Estonia. Over four days, five keynote lectures and 34 papers in parallel sessions addressed ethical questions of crisis and recovery from the perspectives of philosophy, theology, memory studies, semiotics and many other fields.
Societas Ethica – the European Society for Research in Ethics – brings together around 300 members from approximately 35 countries. The Society provides an international platform for scholars in ethics working within different philosophical and theological traditions and seeks to promote scholarly dialogue across political, ideological and religious boundaries.
Opening the conference, Societas Ethica President Prof. Dr Gotlind Ulshöfer emphasised the Society’s interest in strengthening scholarly networks in Central and Eastern Europe, and particularly in the Baltic region. She also highlighted the University of Tartu’s long academic tradition and Tartu’s historical significance for European Protestant theology. From the outset, the conference was characterised by broad-based cooperation: within the University of Tartu, it brought together the School of Theology and Religious Studies, the Centre for Ethics, and the Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, while external partners included the Theological Institute of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church and the University of Rostock.
In his opening address, the Chair of the Scientific Organizing Committee in Estonia, Dr Thomas-Andreas Põder, Associate Professor at the University of Tartu and Professor at the Theological Institute of the EELC, drew attention to the symbolic significance of the opening date: 20 August marked the 35th anniversary of the restoration of Estonia’s independence. Looking back at the tradition of theological ethics in Tartu, he highlighted Alexander von Oettingen, a nineteenth-century pioneer of social ethics, and Elmar Salumaa in the twentieth century. At the same time, theological ethics as a distinct field of research has had a relatively modest institutional presence in Estonia in recent decades. One aim of bringing the Societas Ethica conference to Tartu was therefore to foster cooperation between different contexts of ethical reflection.
From crisis to recovery – but not necessarily back to what came before
The conference theme grew out of the present situation globally, in Europe and in Estonia. The language of crisis has become part of everyday discourse and is applied to a wide range of phenomena, from war and democratic fragility to climate change, pandemics and technological transformation. From an Estonian perspective, Russia’s war against Ukraine forms an immediate political and moral horizon. Yet in preparing the conference, the second term in the title – recovery – was considered equally important. The question was deliberately left open whether recovery means returning to a previous condition, repairing what has been damaged, learning to live with what cannot be repaired, or seeking a new orientation that does not simply attempt to restore pre-crisis conditions.
Estonia and Tartu also gave the interdisciplinary profile of the conference a distinctive emphasis. Alongside ethics, particular attention was given to memory studies and semiotics – fields with strong and internationally recognised research traditions in Estonia. One of the conference’s guiding questions was how signs, narratives, memory and forgetting shape the ways in which crises are perceived and ways out of them are sought. In her opening remarks, Ulshöfer stressed that contemporary crises also pose a challenge to ethics itself: ethical reflection cannot be limited to evaluating actions and agency, but increasingly needs to engage with questions of interpretation, hermeneutics, epistemology, narrative and memory.
Interest in the conference was strong. Around 70 participants from across Europe and beyond gathered in the University of Tartu Assembly Hall and the lecture rooms of the School of Theology and Religious Studies. The programme addressed, among other themes, war, displacement and peace; crises of democracy and human rights; the ethics of trauma and memory; forgiveness and political reconciliation; the climate crisis and the relationship between humans and nature; artificial intelligence; moral agency; and the relationship between religion and politics. In several papers, ethical questions intersected with memory studies and semiotics, for example in discussions of cultural memory and remembrance, forgiveness and reconciliation, prison ethics, and meaning-making in relation to nature.
Five keynote lectures on different dimensions of crisis and recovery
The conference opened with a keynote by internationally recognised philosopher of religion and systematic theologian Prof. Dr Ingolf U. Dalferth of Claremont Graduate University and the University of Zurich. His lecture, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life? Optimism, Pessimism, and Radical Hope”, asked how orientation is possible in a situation where established grand narratives no longer carry conviction but no persuasive new ones have yet emerged, and what radical hope might mean under such conditions.
Prof. Dr Susan Petrilli of the University of Bari Aldo Moro addressed the relationship between semioethics and a “new humanism”, focusing on the key categories of alterity, dialogue and responsibility. Prof. Dr Jaana Hallamaa, Professor of Social Ethics at the University of Helsinki, analysed the complex relationships between victimhood, self-victimisation and safety culture, as well as possible ways out of social stalemate.
Prof. Dr Margit Sutrop, Professor of Practical Philosophy, Head of the Centre for Ethics at the University of Tartu and Member of the Estonian Parliament, focused on the relationship between education and ethics in the age of artificial intelligence and on the importance of ethical competency for human flourishing. The final keynote was given by Hans Ruin, Professor of Philosophy and a scholar of memory studies at Södertörn University, who examined St Paul in the cultural memory of Christianity and Judaism and showed how critique, reinterpretation and renewal of tradition are intertwined in Paul’s thought.
The programme also connected directly with research carried out at the University of Tartu’s School of Theology and Religious Studies. Thomas-Andreas Põder’s paper, “The Sign ‘God’ between Crisis and Recovery: A Theosemiotic Perspective from Post-Secular Estonia”, related questions of crisis and recovery to the Estonian Research Council-funded project GODINEST – “The Sign ‘God’ in Post-Secular Estonia – a Critical-Hermeneutical and Constructive Contribution to the Conviviality of the Religious and the Secular in Liberal Democracy” (PRG3064, 2026–2030), asking what orienting and ethical role the sign “God” may play in a post-secular society. Laura Maria Vilbiks, a member of the GODINEST research team, Junior Research Fellow and doctoral student, addressed the rethinking of the relationship between humans and nature under conditions of ecological crisis in her paper “Nature in Crisis: Ethical and Ontological (Re)orientation in a Deeply Entangled World”, examining the possibilities of ethical and ontological reorientation.
The conference was preceded by a Young Societas workshop for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers, led by Prof. Dr Johann-Christian Põder of the University of Rostock. On Friday, participants were welcomed on behalf of the Estonian Council of Churches by its President, Archbishop Urmas Viilma of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church. On Saturday afternoon, participants took a joint trip on the Emajõgi River aboard a historic barge. The conference dinner was held in the University of Tartu Museum, where this year’s Young Scholar’s Award was presented for the best presentation by an early-career scholar. On Sunday morning, those who wished were invited to take part in an ecumenical morning prayer at Tartu St John’s Church.
Recovery did not turn out to mean restoration
In his closing remarks, Thomas-Andreas Põder noted that over the four days of discussion, recovery had rarely been understood simply as a return to what had existed before. Questions of perception, interpretation, remembrance, responsibility and reorientation repeatedly came to the fore.
“Crisis concerns not only what we should do, but also how we understand situations, perceive ourselves and others, and imagine possibilities for the future,” Põder said, summarising one of the recurring themes of the conference. The interdisciplinary character of the gathering also proved to be more than a heading in the programme: different languages and traditions of ethical reflection met, challenged and complemented one another without being reduced to a single common language.
The date on which the conference concluded also gave the theme particular resonance. Across Europe, 23 August is observed as a day of remembrance for the victims of Stalinism, Nazism and other totalitarian regimes. The conference had begun on the anniversary of the restoration of Estonia’s independence. These two dates do not form a simple narrative “from crisis to recovery”; rather, they point to the fact that recovery cannot be separated from memory. Memory cannot undo what has happened or restore what has been lost, but it can help us take responsibility for the present and remain open to possibilities for the future that are not simply of our own making.
In his closing address, Põder also pointed to the next historical milestone for theological ethics in Tartu: December 2027 will mark the bicentenary of the birth of Alexander von Oettingen. Having worked at the University of Tartu for decades, Oettingen was one of the formative figures in introducing the concept of social ethics into theology and a pioneer in bringing ethical reflection into dialogue with empirical social research. The bicentenary offers an opportunity to revisit this legacy within international research in ethics.
The conference was organised in cooperation between Societas Ethica, the University of Tartu, the Theological Institute of the Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church and the University of Rostock. Within the University of Tartu, the School of Theology and Religious Studies, the Centre for Ethics, and the Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics were involved in the organisation. The conference was also supported by the Estonian Research Council-funded GODINEST project, the Transdisciplinary Institute for Ethics, Diaconia and Digitalisation (TIED) at Evangelische Hochschule Hessen – University of Applied Sciences, and the Estonian Council of Churches.
The Scientific Organizing Committee in Estonia was chaired by Thomas-Andreas Põder and also included Associate Professor Dr Siobhan Kattago, Prof. Dr Kadri Simm, Lecturer Dr Silvi Salupere, Prof. Dr Johann-Christian Põder and Dr Mati Simm, who as Conference Manager carried the main practical responsibility for organising the event.
All keynote lectures were recorded by University of Tartu Television (UTTV) and are available to watch at https://uttv.ee/. In addition, the recording of Dalferth’s lecture includes the conference opening addresses by Gotlind Ulshöfer and Thomas-Andreas Põder, Hallamaa’s lecture is preceded by a welcome address by Urmas Viilma, and Ruin’s lecture is followed by the closing remarks of Ulshöfer and Põder. Without these additional materials, the keynote lectures are also available as separate recordings in a playlist on the YouTube channel of the University of Tartu’s School of Theology and Religious Studies.
Discussion of the conference themes will continue beyond the Tartu meeting. In 2027, De Ethica will publish a special issue entitled “Crisis & Recovery: Ethics in Interdisciplinary Dialogue”, guest-edited by Thomas-Andreas Põder and Johann-Christian Põder. The Call for Papers will be published in the coming days and will invite further work on questions that became central at the conference, including crisis and recovery; memory, trauma and commemoration; semiotics and ethics; hope and resilience; political ethics; democracy and peace; forgiveness and reconciliation; and environmental ethics.
The Estonian organisers are pleased with the success of the conference and the quality of its discussions, and thank all participants and partners for their contribution. Particular thanks go to the Board and Presidency of Societas Ethica for the excellent, open and trusting cooperation throughout the preparation and organisation of the conference.
Read more similar news
