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Research Unit on Everyday Bioethics and Ethics of Science (RUEBES)

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series: Everyday Bioethics

Call for chapters
War, Healthcare, and Bioethics

To be published in the book series Everyday Bioethics (DeGruyter-Brill)

Editors: Carlo Botrugno, University of Florence (Italy) & Maide Barış, Marmara University (Turkey)

Armed conflicts transform the conditions under which medicine is practiced, imposing distinctive constraints on the delivery of healthcare and challenges to the ethical frameworks that inform it. War introduces its own moral architecture in healthcare: scarcity replaces abundance, triage replaces individualized care, and physicians, nurses, and humanitarian workers are asked to make life-and-death decisions at a pace and under a pressure that peacetime training rarely anticipates.

Frequently discussed as a logistical or humanitarian problem, wartime medicine is examined less often as a site of sustained bioethical inquiry. We believe this gap deserves serious scholarly attention: bioethics should not treat war as an exception but as a subject in its own right — a phenomenon in which ethical frameworks are needed most, even as their application grows more difficult.

This edited volume investigates the complex relationship between warfare, healthcare delivery, and bioethical reasoning. We invite contributions from scholars and practitioners across bioethics, medicine, public health, law, human rights, philosophy, political science, anthropology, and related disciplines on the multifaceted ethical implications of providing healthcare in wartime settings, as well as on the political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and legal factors that shape the relationship between war, health, and bioethics. Both theoretical contributions and empirically grounded case studies are welcome, including first-hand accounts from clinicians and humanitarian workers with relevant field experience.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

The principle of medical neutrality and its erosion in contemporary warfare

  • Attacks on hospitals, clinics, and healthcare personnel  as a feature of modern conflict
  • Triage ethics and resource allocation under conditions of war-related scarcity
  • Dual-use research and the ethics of medical technologies with military applications
  • Mental health and moral injury among healthcare workers in conflict zones
  • The ethics of humanitarian intervention and medical humanitarianism
  • Refugee and displaced-persons healthcare in conflict-affected regions
  • Organ trafficking, medical exploitation, and abuse in war and post-conflict settings
  • Racism, discrimination, and unequal access to care in wartime healthcare systems
  • International humanitarian law and its intersection with bioethical principles
  • The preparation of healthcare professionals for ethical decision-making in armed conflicts
  • Bioethics as a form of advocacy and/or activism
  • Just war theory and its applications in contemporary cases

Submission Guidelines

We invite prospective contributors to submit an abstract of 300–500 words, along with a short biographical note (100 words), by 20 August. Abstracts should clearly outline the chapter's central argument, methodology, and its relevance to the volume's themes.

Authors of successful abstracts will be invited to submit full chapters. Full chapters (expected length: 6,000–9,000 words, including references) will be due by 30 November, following notification of acceptance.

Please send submissions or inquiries to carlo.botrugno@unifi.it and baris.maide@gmail.com.

Timeline

Abstract proposal submission deadline: 20 August

  • Notification of acceptance: 5 September
  • Full chapter submission: 30 November
  • Expected publication: Spring 2027

Mission statement

RUEBES è un gruppo di ricerca transnazionale e interdisciplinare che ha come obiettivo principale quello di stimolare la riflessione scientifica nel campo della bioetica a partire dalla prospettiva della “bioetica del quotidiano” sviluppata da Giovanni Berlinguer. Provando a emancipare la bioetica dalla vocazione predominante allo studio di “dilemmi etici” e “questioni di frontiera”, RUEBES intende promuovere una riflessione empiricamente orientata, avente come oggetto tematiche la cui trattazione è sovente trascurata nonostante l'impatto determinante che le stesse esercitano all'interno delle società contemporanee. Seguendo la prospettiva della bioetica del quotidiano, RUEBES si prefigge pertanto di sviluppare analisi critiche nell'ambito delle scienze sociali, e di predisporre strumenti giuridici alternativi con la finalità di garantire una maggiore effettività alle prerogative fondamentali nell'area della salute, prestando particolare attenzione alle condizioni di gruppi sociali marginali e fasce di popolazione vulnerabile. In particolare, mettendo a frutto l'esperienza de L'Altro Diritto, RUEBES indaga il rapporto tra il “diritto dei libri” e il “diritto in azione” - quest'ultimo con il suo portato di credenze, conflitti, distorsioni e transazioni sociali - e le sue ripercussioni nell'ambito delle scienze della vita e della tutela della salute. Inoltre, RUEBES assume tra le proprie finalità la riflessione sistematica sull'etica della scienza e sull'epistemologia della ricerca. Nel perseguire tali obiettivi, RUEBES s'ispira ad una visione orizzontale nei rapporti tra scienza e società, una visione volta a stimolare la produzione di un sapere accessibile ed a valorizzare le forme di conoscenza locali, tradizionali, spontanee, prodotte al di fuori dell'episteme scientifica.

RUEBES is a transnational and interdisciplinary research group whose main objective is fostering the debates in the field of bioethics taking as a reference the approach of the “everyday bioethics” developed by the Italian philosopher Giovanni Berlinguer. Aiming to emancipate bioethics from the predominant perspective focused on “ethical dilemmas” and “cutting-edge topics”, RUEBES promotes an empirical-oriented reflection including subjects usually disregarded in bioethics debates, even though these issues affect the majority of the population in contemporary societies. Following the perspective of everyday bioethics, RUEBES aims at developing critical analysis and alternative tools to ensure effectiveness of the fundamental provisions in healthcare, paying special attention to marginalized social groups and vulnerable populations. Calling on the experience achieved by L'Altro Diritto, RUEBES also focuses on the relationship between “law in the books” and “law in action” - the latter with its beliefs, conflicts, distortions and social negotiations - as well as on its implications in the life sciences and healthcare. Moreover, RUEBES counts the reflection on the ethics of science and research integrity among its main interests. In pursuing its objectives, RUEBES is inspired towards a horizontal vision regarding the relationship between science and society, aiming to generate an accessible knowledge and to promote all the unconventional, local, traditional, and spontaneous forms of knowledge emerging outside the scientific epistemology.

Attività Activities

Pubblicazioni Publications

Ricerca

Il RUEBES è partner dei seguenti progetti di ricerca:

Contatti Contacts

Altro Diritto - Inter-University Research Centre on Detention, Deviance, Marginality and Migration's Government
Department of Legal Sciences, University of Florence
via delle Pandette 35 - 50127 Firenze Italy

Coordinator: Carlo Botrugno
Email: carlo.botrugno@unifi.it

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Write to the RUEBES Coordination
everydaybioethics@gmail.com

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