Collection
Grief in the Digital Age
Paper submissions are invited for the special issue/collection of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences entitled Grief in the Digital Age. The special issue aims to explore the role of digital technologies for grief experiences. Special issue article publications often bring higher citations and visibility than regular papers and attract more relevant readership due to its scope. The journal is indexed in the Web of Science under AHCI, currently in Quartile 1 and placed in the top-10 ranked Philosophy-Category journals, with a 2022 IF of 2,3 and CiteScore of 4,5.
Guest Editor(s):
Regina E. Fabry, Department of Philosophy, Macquarie University, Australia
Marilyn Stendera, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, Australia
DESCRIPTION:
Grief is a complex phenomenon that can be characterised as an emotional process in response to the irrevocable loss of a significant person. In recent years, research at the intersection of phenomenology and empirically informed philosophy of mind has gained momentum (e.g., Cholbi, 2021; Fuchs, 2018; Markovic, 2022; Millar & Lopez-Cantero, 2022; Ratcliffe, 2023). This research has identified and analysed key aspects of the phenomenology and emotional structure of bereavement responses. However, the influence of socio-cultural practices and technologies on the structure and quality of grief experiences deserves further exploration and scrutiny. This is particularly true for death technologies (deathtech). Death technologies can be defined as personalized and individualized artificial intelligence (AI) systems, which are marketed as effective resources for the regulation of grief experiences and commemoration. Recently, death technologies have received considerable philosophical attention (e.g., Buben, 2015; Krueger & Osler, 2022; Lindemann, 2022; Stokes, 2021). However, this research has largely focussed on the ethical and moral implications of death technologies, rather than the systematic development of descriptive accounts of interactions between grieving agents and death technologies. This special issue aims to bring together research in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, the cognitive sciences, and the philosophy of AI to help better understand the impact of death technologies on the structure, quality, and temporal unfolding of grief within and across agents, situational contexts, and cultures.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
• How can agent-deathtech interactions be described from a phenomenological perspective?
• To what extent can accounts of 4E cognition and situated affectivity help understand agent-deathtech interactions?
• How do death technologies influence and shape grief experiences?
• To what extent does the wide availability of death technologies change our attitudes towards our own mortality?
• To what extent does the wide availability of death technologies change how we anticipate the death of significant persons?
• What are the phenomenological and moral implications of the actual or anticipated impact of death technologies on grief?
INVITED CONTRIBUTORS:
Adam Buben
Robert Brooks
Nora Lindemann
Mianna Lotz
Thomas Montefiore
Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basińska
Paul-Mikhail Catapang Podosky
Patrick Stokes
Online SUBMISSION: Please submit your paper by February 1 2025. Should you not be able to meet this deadline, please contact the Lead Guest Editor (contact details below).
Online SUBMISSION: Please use the journal’s Online Manuscript Submission System (Editorial Manager), accessible here Editorial Manager®. Do note that paper submissions via email are not accepted.
Author Submission’s GUIDELINES: Authors are asked to prepare their manuscripts according to the journal’s standard Submission Guidelines to Authors
EDITORIAL PROCESS:
• When uploading your paper in Editorial Manager, please select “SI: Grief in the Digital Age” in the drop-down menu.
• This journal discourage articles over 10000 words.
• All papers will undergo the journal’s standard review procedure (double-blind peer-review), according to the journal’s Peer Review Policy, Process and Guidance
• Reviewers will be selected according to the Peer-Reviewer Selection policies
• Once papers are accepted, they will be made available as Online first articles publications until final publication into an issue and available on the page List of Collections
CONTACT: For any questions, please directly contact the Lead Guest Editor: Regina E. Fabry
Editors
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Regina E. Fabry regina.fabry@mq.edu.au
Regina E. Fabry is a philosopher of mind and cognition. She holds a Lecturer position (continuing) in the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University and is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award (09/2021-08/2024). Methodologically, Regina pursues empirically informed research that applies methods of conceptual analysis, argumentation, and theoretical integration in the field of situated cognition and affectivity. Thematically, she currently focusses on self-narration, narrative practices, grief, and human-technology interactions and has published widely on these topics.
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Marilyn Stendera mstendera@uow.edu.au
Marilyn Stendera is a Lecturer/Career Development Fellow in Philosophy at the University of Wollongong. Her research focuses primarily on the phenomenological tradition, especially its intersections with philosophies of mind and cognition. She is particularly interested in time, including the temporal structures of cognition; how our experiences of time relates to those of other cognisers; how lived temporality has been conceptualised; and how our relationship to time is shaped by, and shapes, the power structures that we inhabit.
