01/07/2026 17:20 - 19:30

HALL: Parenzo - A13

Contact: Ropelato T.

Chair: Apostica G.D., Galvagni L., Ropelato T.

Addressing bioethical questions through the lens of religious traditions is both demanding and necessary. Even in contemporary secularised societies, religious imaginaries continue to shape how we understand life and death, illness and healing, vulnerability and care.
Yet when we speak of bioethical standards, whose standards are we invoking? The language of dignity, autonomy, or vulnerability embedded in the debate and reported in protocols and policies often presents itself as universal while reflecting particular Western and secular genealogies. This framing can obscure a more complex reality: bioethics as a field shaped by plural grammars of value, lived identities, and overlapping worlds of meaning. Rather than presupposing a fixed opposition between religious and secular ethics, the panel invites reflection on how diverse moral worlds intersect, challenge, and translate one another.
We aim to move beyond narratives of conflict or incompatibility by exploring how religious and faith traditions may function as substantive interlocutors in contemporary bioethical discourse. We welcome contributions that examine how religious and faith values and imaginaries are reconfigured within secular frameworks, how they inform practices of care, clinical decision-making, and policy debates, and how they might help articulate more equitable and imaginative bioethical futures.


Possible Topics and Approaches


- Comparative analyses of religious and non-religious approaches to autonomy, dignity, or vulnerability
- The translations and adaptations of religious values within non-religious bioethical or legal frameworks
- The role of ritual, embodiment, and suffering in shaping moral reasoning in healthcare
- Public theology and bioethics in democratic deliberation and policy design
- Empirical or ethnographic studies of how religious and moral imaginaries inform care practices