January 12-15, 2027

Lisbon, Portugal

Deadline: December 15, 2026

Human dignity is perhaps more at risk today than at any other time in recent memory. Subject to targeted threats like exploitation, misrepresentation and humiliation alongside the more subtle erosion caused by persistent violence, exclusion and inequality, most of us live within entrenched systems that deny us some form of recognition, agency and the right to speak freely or dissent from those in power. Exacerbated by the tumult and uncertainty of war, geopolitical tension, tribalism, exclusionary politics and victimization, today’s realities force growing numbers of individuals into silence, left unable to cope with loss, invisibility, worthlessness, disregard, displacement and dehumanization. Dignity flounders when suffering is normalized, empathy diminished and the protection of human rights abandoned. Today, even threats to dignity that were long avoided or banned—such as public shaming, brute objectification, ignominy, spectacles of violence and hate speech—are back in our lives with a vengeance.

So perhaps it is no surprise that dignity prompts more responses and questions than scholars can easily settle. Some see dignity as an unassailable right—echoing Immanuel Kant’s famous dictum that dignity requires treating individuals as ends, not means—while others maintain its vagueness undercuts its conceptual worth. Some perseverate whether dignity is a value or status, and others wonder whether the concept of dignity is primarily moral, legal or political in nature. Larger questions of impact—how dignity’s repudiation can best be stymied, against which institutions and structures does dignity need to be assessed or with which institutions and structures can it best thrive—remain out of reach. All the while, threats to human dignity continue to loom large, even as we have not figured out how best to identify them, much less wrestle with their resolution.

Hannah Arendt steers us toward the media as a solution to dignity’s predicaments. In her seminal work The Human Condition, she not only makes clear that totalitarianism destroys people’s dignity but also that the respect for human dignity entails recognizing others as “builders of worlds or cobuilders of a common world.” Respect for—or violation of—the right of others to live a dignified life is manifested not only in concrete actions but also in mediated narratives that cultivate empathy or hostility, shaping the humanization or dehumanization of individuals, communities and even nations. Dignity, therefore, is not only safeguarded or threatened by political institutions but is also continuously negotiated within media environments, through communicative practices and regimes of representation.

We aim, then, to shift the discussion of dignity by asking what role do the media play in dignity’s centering and assailment. How do the media help and hinder its presence? As sites of symbolic power, the media both witness and report on dignity’s ascendance and descendance as well as on the conditions that promote its intensification and diminishment. They also give it shape, by determining whose dignity matters and in which way, whose voices are heard and whose remain silenced. Can the media help ensure a more widespread sense of individual and collective worth, acceptance and belonging? And should we expect them to do so? 

In today’s challenging and uncertainty times, the 2027 Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication will discuss the interconnections between Media and Dignity. Dignity can be addressed from a wide range of perspectives, understood as a moral construct but also as a communicative practice that is enacted, negotiated, and either affirmed or violated through language, representation and public visibility. How do the media represent individuals, communities and nations that are presented as threats in political discourses? How do communication practices reproduce or contest stereotypes that legitimize discrimination? And what about those faced to live or flee war: how are their voices made (in)visible? Beyond the media, how do activists use different communitive tools to promote human dignity? Which strategies can be used to push back on exclusionary politics and its promotion of the “other” as unworthy of living a dignified life? How do online harassment, political intimidation and precarious labor conditions undermine journalists’ and media practioners’ capacity to act as advocates of human dignity? These are just some of the questions we aim to debate at the 7th edition of the Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication—a venture begun by the Faculty of Human Sciences (Universidade Católica Portuguesa) and the Center for Media@Risk (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania)—and now coordinated by the Faculty of Human Sciences (Universidade Católica Portuguesa), the Annenberg Schools for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s School of Journalism and Communication, the University of Helsinki’s Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities and The Europaeum.

We welcome proposals by doctoral students and early career post-doctoral researchers from all over the world to discuss the intertwined relations between media and dignity in different geographies and temporalities. The list below illustrates some of topics for possible consideration. Other topics dealing with media and dignity are also welcome:

-       Human dignity in war and tragedy

-       Covering loss, suffering and displacement

-       Media activism and the promotion of human dignity

-       Otherness and dignity

-       Loss of reputation

-       Us versus Them narratives

-       Stereotypes and misrepresentations 

-       Visibility and invisibility in the media 

-       Symbolic exclusion versus mutual recognition

-       The effect of sensationalism on representation 

-       Attacks on free speech

-       Online harassment and political threats and intimidation

-       Digital media and humiliation

-       Reality TV

-       Cyberbullying, trolling, image based violence and online harassment

-       Exclusionary politics and dehumanization 

-       Discursive eroding of human dignity

-       Human rights amidst war and exclusionary politics

-       Denouncing hate speech and aggression against gender, racial and religious minorities

-       The platformization of news: reducing journalists to content producers

-       Media, precarity and professional dignity

-       Algorithms, AI and human dignity

-       The eroding of human dignity in specific national or regional contexts

-       … 

PAPER PROPOSALS

Proposals should be sent to lisbonwinterschool@ucp.pt no later than 15 September 2026 and include a paper title, extended abstract in English (700 words), name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation and a brief bio (max. 100 words) mentioning ongoing research. Applicants will be informed of the result of their submissions by early October. 

FULL PAPER SUBMISSION 

Presenters will be required to submit full papers (max. 20 pages, 1.5 spacing) by 15 December 2026. The papers will be shared with the respondents but will not be published online. After the Lisbon Winter School, the authors of some of the best papers may be invited to publish their work in a special journal issue.  

ORGANIZERS

Nelson Ribeiro & Barbie Zelizer 

CONVENORS

Sarah Banet-Weiser,  Risto Kunelius & Francis Lee

For more information visit lisbonwinterschool.com