Power and Care: Enactive Approaches and Critical Social Philosophy

International Conference | 27th – 31st May 2026 | Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

The application deadline for talk and poster proposals has now passed. Standard tickets are still available for general attendees!

Registration is now open! Contribute to the exchange of ideas and join the gathering as a general attendee.

Contents

• Introduction
• Programme overview
• People
• Programme schedule
• Location and accessibility
• Registrations
• Our sponsors
• Gallery

Introduction

The conference took place from 28th to 30th May 2026, with arrival and welcome on the 27th and departure on the 31st. Bringing together scholars, scientists, researchers, academics, and practitioners from a wide swath of disciplines, this event sought to foster dialogue at the interstices and frontiers of existing bodies of knowledge, in the hopes of reaching toward creative and hitherto unimagined responses to the crises of power in our world today.

This gathering was unique in bringing the enactive approach, writ large, into conversation with critical social theory, with a distinct focus on questions of power and care. Acknowledging the critical times in which we are living, and the rapidly shifting social orders and ecologies of our planet, it seems ever more urgent to consider how enaction might engage — and is already engaging — with social and political problems, and how critical social thought might in turn enrich, enlarge, and to some extent, ground the currents of enactive thinking. The historical underpinnings of enaction, its status as a critical response to prevailing scientific norms, and its emphasis on the embeddedness of perception, affect, cognition, and meaning, set the stage for a productive dialogue with critical social theories, which took as their premise the situated and relational character of meaning, particularly within systems of power. The hope was that these two epistemological ecosystems would mutually illuminate each other, and in their interaction, help to provide more nuanced and, indeed, more caring responses to the social, political, and ecological dilemmas we are witnessing today. 

Programme overview

As you will read in the Call for Papers (below), the conference took place over three days and was conceived in such a way as to trace a loose progression from the biological and ecological (“The Politics of Life and the Environment”), to the cognitive, bodily, and affective (“Mind, Body, and the Sociopolitical Shaping of Experiences”), to the more explicitly social, political, and linguistic dimensions of experience (“Political Agency and Social Philosophy”). The questions for each day were meant to be generative and allowed for a significant degree of crossover and reverberation between the three days. 

The programme was centred around three days of panel presentations and general discussion. The status of enactive engagements with social and political issues was scrutinised while providing opportunities for critical reflection, dialogue, and bridge-building to neighbouring discourses around common concerns.

In addition to the keynote panellists, we had almost 300 participants from around the world, who submitted submit paper or poster proposals of their own or applied as a general attendee.

People

Programme schedule

Conference Brochure

Location and accessibility

For detailed directions, transportation options, and maps, please visit the Ciutadella campus website.

Registrations

Below you can find the registration costs for the conference. Please note that these costs are payable during the registration phase, after the submission deadline ends. Details about how to make your payment will be shared very soon. Some scholarships are available for students, people who are retired, and people from developing countries.

Don’t forget: by becoming an MLE Friend (just €50/year for individuals), you’ll receive reduced rates for this conference as well as access to exclusive webinars and a circle of like-minded people. Join our community here!

Our sponsors

We are grateful to share that “Power and Care: Enactive Approaches and Critical Social Philosophy” was very generously sponsored by Institut de Cultura and Centre for Aesthetics, Religion and Contemporary Culture at Universitat Pompeu Fabra; Editorial Kairós; DondeGo; and Pares Baltà.

Our evening cultural events were made possible through the support of a grant from Templeton Religion Trust, awarded via the PROGRAM IN THE STUDY OF MYSTICISM (PRISM) at Tampere University.

If you are interested in promoting dialogue addressing ecological, social, and ethical challenges and would like a meaningful platform to demonstrate your organisation’s commitment to social change, we invite you to become a sponsor of our event. If you are interested, please reach out to gerard.puig01@estudiant.upf.edu and thibaultarthurtien@gmail.com.

Gallery