📢 Call for Papers | Special Issue | Asian Bioethics Review (Springer Nature)
- piyalimitra94
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity (EDI) are fundamental to bioethics, influencing both representation and the way ethical principles are conceptualised, debated, and applied. Questions of justice, recognition, and inclusion demand both philosophical innovation and practical transformation in biomedical practice.
This Special Issue of the Asian Bioethics Review seeks to bridge theoretical enquiry and applied practice, offering a platform for scholarship that explores diverse and contemporary perspectives on bioethical theory and practice while also demonstrating how EDI can be embedded in real-world institutions, policies, and communities. We welcome contributions that engage with both conceptual frameworks (e.g. Rawlsian justice, Collective Reflective Equilibrium, plural moral traditions) and practice-oriented approaches (e.g. policy design, healthcare equity, AI fairness, planetary health). We acknowledge that EDI is not a static checklist but a dynamic ethical and political project, and invite authors to engage critically with how definitions of equality, equity, and inclusion are shaped by history, culture, and power, and to propose ways in which bioethics can embody these ideals through practice, dialogue, and structural reform.
Potential Themes
We invite both theoretical and applied contributions, including but not limited to:
Reinterpreting the principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice through an EDI lens.
Rawlsian ethics: the original position, veil of ignorance, and difference principle as tools for equity.
Collective Reflective Equilibrium as a method for inclusive, cross-cultural ethical consensus.
Disrupting dominant bioethical thought: drawing from non-Euro-American traditions, such as Ubuntu, Hindu, Confucian, Buddhist, Islamic, Indigenous, and many other frameworks in the Global South.
Personhood, respect for life, and moral standing of marginalised or excluded groups.
Structural injustice and epistemic exclusion in global bioethics.
Feminist, intersectional, postcolonial, and decolonial approaches to bioethics: interrogating power, gender, race, caste, colonial legacies, and epistemic justice in healthcare, research, and policy.
Systemic inclusion in healthcare and public health of historically marginalised groups.
Disability and neurodiversity: advancing inclusive approaches in healthcare, research, and policy.
Gender, reproduction and kinship: confronting discrimination and exclusion, and addressing gender, caste, class, and cultural barriers to care.
Tackling bias, fairness, and inclusivity in emerging technologies.
Planetary health and climate ethics: vulnerable communities disproportionately impacted by ecological crises.
Bioethics education: embedding EDI principles in curricula, training, and professional development.
Community participation: amplifying under-represented voices in bioethical deliberation and practice
Ethics of global health partnerships: power asymmetries, representation, and equitable collaboration in research and practice.
Expressions of Interest (optional)
Prospective authors are warmly invited to submit a brief expression of interest (approximately 250–500 words) outlining their proposed contribution to the Special Issue. While this is entirely optional, it provides an opportunity to discuss the suitability and fit of a proposed paper before full submission. Expressions of interest should be sent to Piyali Mitra at abr.ediinbioethics@gmail.com. Authors will receive informal feedback from the Guest Editors wherever possible to help guide the development of their manuscripts.
Submission
Please refer to our Submission Guidelines before submitting your manuscript. Papers can be submitted as an Original Article (5,000–8,000 words) or a Perspective Article (2,000–5,000 words) via the Editorial Manager before 15 January 2027. When prompted, tick the box for “Special Issue”, and subsequently for “Equality, Diversity, and Inclusivity”. All submissions will receive full and supportive feedback, even if they are not selected for the special issue. If accepted after review and revision, papers will be prepared for online publication immediately, with a subsequent inclusion in the Special Issue, currently planned for October 2027.
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