20th Annual Society for Ricoeur Studies Conference

The Society for Ricoeur Studies is pleased to announce its 20th annual conference, hosted at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, in partnership with the Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education.

The 2026 conference invites critical reflection on what it means to be human in an era of profound technological, ecological, and political transformation.

Keynote Speakers

Conference Theme

Drawing on Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology — from the fragility and disproportion of the human person in Fallible Man to the “capable human being” in Oneself as Another who speaks, acts, narrates, and takes responsibility — the conference explores how hermeneutical, phenomenological, rhetorical, and theological traditions can engage the contemporary challenges of posthumanism, transhumanism, and antihumanism.

It welcomes dialogue across the diverse forms of humanism — classical, religious, secular, civic, incarnational, and ecological — and emerging currents in material phenomenology, postphenomenology, affect theory, new materialism, and critical social theory. It also invites reflection on traditions of spiritual and ethical formation, the Levinasian ethics of alterity, and the contested question of whether refiguring the human requires moving beyond the human altogether or calls for a deepened understanding of the human as a fragile, capable, and interpretive being.

Registration, Membership, and Fees

Participation in the conference requires membership in the Society for Ricoeur Studies and payment of the conference fee, for both in-person and online participation. Members must be in good standing — paid current on their membership dues — in order to present.

Membership dues are valid from September 1 to August 31. Members who paid dues prior to or at last year’s conference remain in good standing until August 31, 2026. If your dues are not up to date, you can pay them through PayPal on the Society’s website; conference fees can be paid by the same method. A PayPal account is not required.

Go to conference registration

Hotel and Accommodations

We have reserved a block of rooms at the Delta Hotels Santa Clara Silicon Valley, 2151 Laurelwood Road, Santa Clara. The hotel lies about three miles north of Norman Y. Mineta San Jose International Airport (SJC), roughly ten minutes by car, and about four miles from the Santa Clara University campus — ten to fifteen minutes depending on traffic. The hotel does not operate an airport shuttle, so plan on a taxi or a ride-hailing service such as Uber or Lyft. Between the hotel and campus, VTA bus 59 runs direct in about twenty-five minutes on weekday mornings — roughly every half hour, with a short walk at each end — compared to roughly ten minutes by car. Saturday service is less frequent, roughly every forty minutes, and ends in the early evening; later at night the same trip can take an hour or more and require two or three connections.

Rooms are held on a first-come, first-served basis. Please book early rather than close to the deadline. Reservations must be made through the group link before the cut-off date, after which the remaining rooms and the group rate are released.

There are also other hotels in Santa Clara and San Jose, and short-term rentals in the area, if you would prefer to make your own arrangements.

Travel and Venue

Santa Clara University
500 El Camino Real
Santa Clara, CA 95053, USA
www.scu.edu

Santa Clara station sits directly across El Camino Real from campus and is served by Caltrain, ACE, and Amtrak’s Capitol Corridor. VTA bus routes 22 and 522 also run along El Camino Real past the campus, and VTA route 60 connects both terminals of San Jose International Airport (SJC) to the Santa Clara Transit Center at the edge of campus. SFO is roughly forty-five minutes away by car.

Between the conference hotel and campus, VTA bus 59 runs direct in about twenty-five minutes on weekday mornings; see Hotel and Accommodations for details.

Online and Hybrid Participation

The conference will be held and conducted in person, with room for a limited number of online participants. The schedule may include a few fully online sessions, and we anticipate one or two rooms with technology enabling hybrid panel sessions.

Call for Papers

The full call for papers, including the extended description of the theme, the complete list of topics, and submission guidelines, remains available in English and French for reference. Accepted abstracts and panel proposals will be published on the Society’s website prior to the conference.

Special Session

The conference will feature a special session devoted to the Bloomsbury Academic series Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur. Recent publications in the series include works on Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology, hermeneutics of liberation, moral anthropology, and the renewal of philosophical anthropology in relation to vulnerability, capability, and justice.

Contact

Questions about proposals, panels, and the program may be sent to SRS vice-president Héctor Acero Ferrer at HAceroFerrer@icscanada.edu. General enquiries may be sent through the Society’s contact page.