Conferences provide valuable opportunities to academics and can influence disciplinary agendas.

But scholars have unequal access to conferences, often owing to where such conferences are held and the availability of funding.

As Kritika Maheshwari (Delft University of Technology), Thierry Ngosso (University of St. Gallen), and Brian Berkey (University of Pennsylvania) explain in the this guest post, this is not bad just for those scholars, but “for philosophy as a discipline.”

They have each been involved in organizing conferences around the world, and in what follows they discuss why it is worthwhile to do so, and share some advice based on their experiences.

[Mark Wallinger, “World Turned Upside Down”]

How (and Why) to Organize a Conference in the Global South
by Kritika Maheshwari, Thierry Ngosso, and Brian Berkey

Conferences are an important part of professional life in academic philosophy. They provide opportunities to get helpful feedback on our work, to learn about what others are working on, and to develop professionally valuable relationships. One of the most significant features of conferences is that they allow us to engage in intellectually rewarding ways with a wide range of colleagues, many of whom we might not otherwise have significant professional interactions with. This engagement contributes to the quality of our research and teaching by exposing us to perspectives and approaches that we might not otherwise have encountered, and also simply makes professional life in academia more enjoyable and rewarding.

Conferences also serve important institutional functions. They shape disciplinary agendas, determine which questions and approaches gain visibility, and influence whose work is taken up, cited, and taught.

Importantly, the opportunities to participate in conferences, and therefore to access their benefits, are distributed very unequally. Some of us are fortunate enough to be able to attend multiple conferences each year in a variety of locations, while others have few if any institutional resources available for conference participation. Philosophers based in well-resourced institutions—predominantly in North America, Europe, and Australia—tend to attend conferences held in those same regions, while those based in institutions across the Global South face significant barriers to participation. The result is limited cross-regional engagement within the discipline. In addition, this separation makes it the case that conferences organized and hosted by institutions in the Global North—often with the interests, constraints, and professional norms of those institutions in mind—generate institutional effects that tend to reinforce existing asymmetries in professional recognition, exposure, and agenda-setting power.

All of this is bad for everyone, and bad for philosophy as a discipline. We would all benefit from greater engagement among philosophers around the world. We have strong reasons to develop a more globally inclusive approach to conferences, as part of a broader effort to build a more globally integrated philosophical community.

To that end, we want to encourage those who are in a position to do so to consider prioritizing these goals in at least some of their professional endeavors. This could involve anything from simply choosing to attend a conference in the Global South, to getting involved in organizing one.

All three of us have been involved in organizing large conferences in Global South locations in recent years. In 2019, Thierry launched EthicsLab at the Catholic University of Central Africa in Yaoundé, Cameroon with a large international conference, and has hosted a number of events there. Brian, having attended the launch event, assisted Thierry in organizing the 5-year anniversary conference in 2024, which Kritika attended. In 2025, Kritika spearheaded the organization of the first PPEL in the Global South Conference, held at the National Law School University of India in Bengaluru, with Brian and many others on the organizing team (see here for some post-conference reflections). Kritika and Brian are currently organizing the second PPEL in the Global South Conference, which will be held at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia this December. Their goal is to hold an annual conference in a different Global South location, as part of the broader PPEL in the Global South Initiative, which they co-founded.

These events were, in our view, all extremely successful, and provided participants with valuable experience and, we think, some insights into what can be achieved by organizing conferences in the Global South. In the remainder of this post, we’ll describe how we approached organizing the events along a range of key dimensions, with the hope that this can provide some guidance for those who might want to get involved in organizing similar conferences in the future. We’ll also offer some thoughts about what we take to be essential features of these events, given the goal of building a more globally inclusive philosophical community.

It will be helpful to structure our comments with reference to specific aspects of conference organizing that we found particularly important to consider. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and we very much welcome our readers to share lessons and reflections on what has or has not worked in their own experience.

Participants

For all of these events, we’ve ensured that roughly half of the speakers were scholars based in the region where the conference was being held, and the other half from the rest of the world. The ability to do this, and to thereby make these events opportunities for broad and extensive engagement among many scholars from the Global South and elsewhere, sets our efforts apart from other attempts to make Philosophy more globally inclusive. For example, some conferences that are held in developed countries aim to fund a small number (e.g. 1-2) of scholars from the Global South to attend. This certainly isn’t a bad thing to do; but in our view, it’s also important to get scholars with access to more resources to travel to places where it’s possible to include many more Global South-based scholars. Conferences that include a small number of Global South-based scholars are no substitute for events that bring together larger numbers of people across the North-South divide.

Local Partners and University Support

It’s essential to have committed local partners on the organizing team to help with a range of logistical issues, such as securing rooms, recommending accommodations, organizing meals, arranging local transportation, providing guidance on visa issues, etc. It’s also helpful, if possible, to have support from a University at which the conference can be held. In Yaoundé, we had a number of local scholars and others who did an outstanding job helping Thierry with all of the on-the-ground organizing work, and had tremendous support from the Catholic University of Central Africa. In Bengaluru, we had an incredible team of local co-organizers who handled a great deal of the on-the-ground work, along with extremely generous support from the National Law School University of India, which provided us not only with rooms for the conference, but also meals and discounted accommodations for many attendees. For the upcoming conference in Bogotá, we have committed co-organizers based in Colombia, along with Colombian scholars based elsewhere on the organizing team. And the Universidad de los Andes has been very supportive of our hosting the event on their campus.

Funding

Perhaps the biggest challenge in organizing conferences in the Global South that can include many scholars from the region is securing sufficient funding to cover expenses for those without access to institutional funding. The launch event in Yaoundé was made possible largely by funding from a range of institutions in the developed world, including most significantly the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. For the 5-year anniversary event, we were able to cover the necessary costs, including funding travel and accommodations for participating scholars from across Africa, through a combination of crowdfunding and generous registration fees paid by participants from the developed world. The PPEL in the Global South event in Bengaluru was funded by a combination of support from the National Law School of India University, a generous grant from the International Network for Economic Method, and support from organizers from Purdue University and the University of Hong Kong.

Moreover, thinking carefully about how some of the costs that are typically involved in putting on conferences can be avoided without loss is helpful. For instance, in Bengaluru we had no keynote talks. This not only saved a significant amount of money, but also fostered a spirit of egalitarianism among participants by ensuring everyone received equal time and attention on the conference program. Similarly, something as simple as opting for local catering rather than a fancy hotel dinner can substantially reduce expenses.

Those who aim to organize a conference in the Global South need to be proactive about pursuing a range of possible funding sources, since the success of these events depends on making sure that scholars from the region can attend without taking on too much financial burden. We took this approach in Bengaluru by not charging registration fees, which greatly increased the ability of participants from across India to join us even on a limited budget. We also hope that those in a position to provide funding for conferences in the Global South will recognize the value of doing so.

Preparedness for Complications

In organizing a conference of this kind, there are bound to be at least some challenges that arise that can’t be fully anticipated in advance. For example, we faced some visa-related complications for both the 2024 Yaoundé event and the Bengaluru conference. And there will almost certainly be program adjustments that need to be made in the time leading up to the conference, as some people’s ability to travel to the conference location may change for a variety of reasons. Organizers need to be flexible and prepared to handle all of this. Of course, having a reliable team among whom the burdens can be shared makes all of this much more manageable.

Evaluation and Selection of Abstracts

Decisions about which submissions are accepted play a central role in shaping the overall quality of a conference program, as well as in distributing professional opportunities and visibility among participants with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Yet abstract review is also an underappreciated site at which epistemic injustices and implicit biases can easily arise—particularly when prevailing standards of “quality,” and “rigor” track (sometimes unfairly so) dominant research traditions, institutional norms, and writing styles shaped by institutions in the Global North. We do not have a general recipe for avoiding these pitfalls. One practice that has proved valuable in our experience, however, is ensuring diversity within the selection committee itself, and in particular ensuring that our co-organizers from the host institutions were actively and substantively involved in evaluating abstracts and making selection decisions. This had the further benefit that abstracts focusing on context-specific questions—such as those engaging regional political, social, or philosophical traditions—were assessed by reviewers familiar with the relevant intellectual and practical contexts, rather than being judged against unfamiliar or inapplicable benchmarks.

Language

Organizing such conferences will inevitably involve making hard choices about the working language of a conference, expectations about fluency, and norms of presentation and discussion. These are not mere practical issues but embody persistent challenges with significant epistemic and professional consequences. For this reason, it is imperative to treat decisions about language as matters requiring careful, context-sensitive judgment, and we have deliberately left them to the local co-organizers. In Thierry’s case, this resulted in a bilingual conference, with some panels conducted in French and others in English. For the Bengaluru conference, by contrast, English was the primary working language, reflecting the highly multilingual audience and the role that English plays as a shared academic language within Indian academia. Importantly, these decisions were not made simply in the interest of ease or efficiency, but after sustained reflection on the audiences, institutional contexts, and epistemic trade-offs involved—as such decisions deserve to be. With increased funding and technological capacity, these decisions might look different, allowing for more robust forms of linguistic inclusion, such as live translations or providing translated abstracts and handouts of talks.

Program Design

In designing the program for this kind of conference, it’s important to keep the aim of promoting engagement in mind. All of our sessions have been set up with multiple papers on related topics, and we’ve aimed to always have a mix of speakers from the conference region and those from elsewhere in each session. In Yaoundé in 2024, we encouraged panel submissions that were co-organized by those submitting, and that were required to include a mix of scholars from Africa and from elsewhere. One advantage of this approach is that it creates pre-conference collaboration between Global North and Global South participants, which can reduce apprehension and generate relationships in advance of the conference. Another is that it can help to foster longer-term intellectual collaboration.

Another important feature of the programs is that we’ve included long periods for lunch and generous coffee breaks so that there’s plenty of time for informal discussion, and sufficient opportunities for everyone to meet all or nearly all of the other participants. And both because many participants will have traveled a long way, and because it’s important to have as much time as possible for people to spend together, these conferences have all been 3-4 days.

Social Planning

Arranging time for socializing outside of the conference site is also valuable. Dinners or drinks in the city on some evenings, or informal gatherings at a hotel where people are staying, are easy and generally available ways of organizing social time. In some locations, there might be other locally distinctive options that would be worth pursuing. Both in Yaoundé and Bengaluru, the social time outside of the conference was especially valuable for fostering connections.

Vibe

As organizers, it’s important to do what you can to create a friendly, relaxed, and engaging vibe for the conference, and to encourage broad engagement. Try to introduce yourself to as many attendees as possible early on in the conference, and encourage others to avoid spending the bulk of their time with people they already know by, for example, eating lunch with some people you’re meeting for the first time.

Participant Attitudes and Expectations

(This is mainly relevant for those coming from the developed world.) It’s very important that those traveling to a Global South location from the developed world do so with the right attitude and expectations. As organizers, it’s important to let participants know what they need to be prepared for. Attending a conference in the Global South shouldn’t be a luxury vacation, and it’s essential that organizers create an atmosphere that encourages everyone to adapt to whatever circumstances may arise and maintain a positive attitude.

Broader Impact

In addition to generating valuable scholarly engagement, a conference in the Global South can also make valuable impacts within the community in the region where it is held. It can, for example, raise awareness of important issues and highlight the contributions that scholars can make in promoting reflection and engagement on these issues. The EthicsLab launch conference, for example, involved significant efforts to engage the broader community in Central Africa, and generated media interest and coverage in the region. Organizers should think about whether they want their conference to include explicit efforts to engage the community beyond academia.

We hope that this persuades you to consider becoming involved in the kinds of efforts that we’re encouraging. If you’re interested in attending the upcoming PPEL in the Global South Conference in Bogotá, we’ve just extended the submission deadline.