THE EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE RESEARCH PROGRAMME: DEGENERATIVE OR PROGRESSIVE?
The notion of epistemic injustice introduced by Miranda Fricker in 2007 raised interest in the harmful effects of prejudice within analytic philosophy and beyond. It inspired various projects linking ethics and epistemology. The notion, originally used to capture the epistemic disadvantage that people experience for their race or gender, has been applied to an increasing number of domains.
In recent years, several objections have been raised to the application of epistemic injustice. Here are some of the issues discussed in the literature:
- the problems of silencing and sidelining minorities cannot be solved at the level of interpersonal relationships but have institutional and societal dimensions;
- the effects of power asymmetries on knowledge exchanges should not be framed in terms of justice or injustice, but in other terms (such as oppression or exclusion);
- remedies to the phenomena described as epistemic injustice need to be systemic and the exercise of individual virtues is not sufficient to address them;
- the construct of epistemic injustice has not been adequately validated, and there has been little empirical testing, so we cannot know whether the phenomenon of epistemic injustice is as pervasive in our practices as it is claimed.
In this topical collection, we gather contributions to the debate about the strengths and limitations of the epistemic injustice research programme.
Confirmed contributors:
Miguel Núñez de Prado Gordillo (Universidad de Granada)
Aidan McGlynn (University of Edinburgh)
Anneli Jefferson (University of Cardiff)
Catarina Dutilh-Novaes (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Katherine Puddifoot (Durham University)
Thor Hennelund Nielsen and Anke Bueter (Aarhus Universitet)
Mads Gram Henriksen, Kasper Møller Nielsen, and Julie Nordgaard (Københavns Universitet)
Deadline for submission: 30 September 2026
Notification of acceptance: 8 January 2027
For further queries, please email Lisa (l.bortolotti@bham.ac.uk) or Elisabetta (elisabetta.lalumera@unibo.it) and write “Argumenta EI Special Issue” in the subject of the email.
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