The Moral Roots of Quarantine: The East and the West 16–17 December 2021
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
Faculty of Arts and Humanities – University of Macau
The conference will be held online on Zoom as to allow broad participation.
Call for Abstracts: The conference mainly aims at enriching the scholarly debate about comparative East–West perspectives
on the responses to infectious diseases, with a special focus on anti–pandemic measures and their
justifications. The global nature of the current emergency calls for an interdisciplinary as well as intercultural
investigation: the conference brings together scholars from the East and the West currently working on
COVID–19 from diverse disciplinary perspectives (philosophy of science, philosophy of politics,
philosophy of medicine, among others. This event is part of the interdisciplinary research project “The Moral
Roots of Quarantine: a comparative study of the moral and cultural dimension of quarantine in COVID–19 pandemic across
East and West” (https://mrq.fah.um.edu.mo)
Confirmed speakers include: Alex Broadbent (Durham University), Ruiping Fan (City University of Hong
Kong), Markus Gabriel (University of Bonn), Hans–Georg Moeller (University of Macau), Daniele Santoro
(University of Minho).
Contributed Presentations:
There is space in the program for up to eight presentations by scholars, advanced graduate students, and
early career researchers, whose work lies broadly within the theme of the conference. To notify your interest
in presenting your research at the conference, please send a title and an abstract of your paper (no more
than 500 words) to mrqconference2021@gmail.com. Papers must be suited for a 20–minute presentation.
We are pleased to announce that up to 5 prizes of 3000MOP (around 320 euros) will be awarded for the
best contributed abstracts. To apply for the prize, please notify your interest in applying at the time of the
abstract submission with your CV in attachment. The awardees will be selected by the scientific committee.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
• The global nature of the pandemic and culturally distinctive responses to it.
• The representation and deployement of moral values in anti–pandemic public discourse, scientific
discourse, and social media.
• Normative justifications of pandemic responses in culturally diverse contexts.
• Representations of the pandemic in politics, the media, and the arts in different socio–political and
cultural contexts.
• Comparison of the reactions to the Covid–19 pandemic with previous pandemics.
• Anti–pandemic public discourse analysis.
• Moral justifications in negationism and conspirativism.
Book Salon:
The conference will also include a book salon aimed at engaging authors about their recently published
scholarly works (monographs, edited books, edited journal special issues) on the conference topics. Authors
and editors who are interested in presenting their work in this context book salon (10–minute timeslot) are
invited to send an email with the information and synopsis of the published work at
mrqconference2021@gmail.com by November 7, 2021.
Important Dates:
Deadline for abstract submission: 7 November 2021.
Notification of abstract acceptance/award winners: by 15 November 2021.
More information on the conference can be found at https://mrq.fah.um.edu.mo/events
