[Commlist] Call for Applications: 7th Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication | Media and Dignity

7th Lisbon Winter School for the Study of Communication
MEDIA AND DIGNITY | 12-15 January 2027

Call for Applications

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 /at/ ucp.pt)<mailto:(lisbonwinterschool /at/ 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<http://lisbonwinterschool.com/>

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