Logistics:
The 11th Annual Graduate Conference in Religion and Ecology has opened its Call for Submissions. Submissions for papers and creative/artistic works are due December 4, 2026 at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time. The conference will be held in-person on Friday, February 26, 2027 at Yale Divinity School in New Haven, CT with an optional Gallery Walk Thursday, February 25, 2027 from 7-9pm. We encourage submissions from graduate students globally and welcome content related to any spirituality, religion, traditional knowledge system, or lack-thereof.
This Year's Theme:
The theme of this year's conference is: "Ecological Grief: Encountering Vulnerability & Cultivating Resilience." This theme serves as inspiration, but is not a prescription.
We will wrestle with several critical questions this year. How do roots inspire us in the midst of crises, whether they be environmental, within our communities, or in our own personal, spiritual lives? How can our ancestral and unfolding place-based relations tether us to hope? How do emerging roots allow us to move forward through intercommunions of persons, communities, religions, spiritualities, and scientific practices? And ultimately, we ask, what if everything we need is right below our feet?
In the face of deadly heat waves, devastating storms, and melting glaciers across the globe, this year’s theme invites us into the heart of disaster. When webs of life have been reduced to char, dust, and rubble, and grief feels more vivid than hope, where does religion emerge, and how is it transformed? The stories of devastation, grief, fear, and regeneration that surround us are often deeply communal and spiritual. They call us to consider how we grieve ecological losses, care for one another, and envision possibilities for resilience in the midst of vulnerability.
Ecological grief can result from sudden catastrophes as well as from the gradual loss of species, habitats, and familiar ways of life. Understanding these losses requires attention to the interconnectedness of human and more-than-human communities, alongside the unequal distribution of vulnerability and resources for recovery. How do we acknowledge our shared exposure to ecological harm while also considering the histories, institutions, and practices that place a disproportionate burden on certain communities?
The word “disaster” leads to a number of questions of its own. Does a disaster represent a calamity for humans or for nature? Disaster scholars have long maintained that no disaster is purely natural: it is when a hazard meets vulnerabilities shaped by histories of extraction, colonialism, racism, and economic inequality. Forests, rivers, and animals that are burned up or drowned also suffer their own losses. Vulnerability, then, is a condition all living beings share and a burden distributed unjustly. Perhaps the line between human and natural calamity cannot hold.
Religion shapes how we interpret and experience ecological devastation. Religious accounts of divine judgment or providence can assign blame to those who suffer, obscure responsibility, or encourage resignation. Religious traditions and practices can also sustain communal grief, mobilize resilience, and inspire efforts toward justice and repair. These possibilities invite critical reflection on how religious responses to disaster shape whose suffering is recognized, whose losses are grieved, and whose futures are protected.
This year’s Graduate Conference in Religion & Ecology welcomes research, workshops, and artistic work that explore a reciprocal understanding of ecological grief, vulnerability, and resilience. We are especially interested in how ecological grief—for losses already suffered and those still to come—might cultivate resilience. We invite presentations from graduate students (master’s and doctoral) and emerging scholars worldwide working in Religion & Ecology through history, literature, theology, philosophy, biblical studies, sociology, and anthropology. Through interdisciplinary conversation, we seek to explore ways of living that sustain spiritual, communal, material, and ecological well-being.
What Can I submit?
Papers & Artistic Submissions:
This year’s GCRE invites submissions that wrestle with the following questions:
- Where can the sacred be found in the midst of ecological catastrophe?
- What role does religion play in crisis aversion and response?
- How do climate disasters navigate and engage religion, and how can we learn from nature’s regenerative response to devastation?
- How can spiritual responses to ecological grief be a doorway to healing, restoration, and holistic engagement with the more-than-human?
Contact gcre@yale.edu with questions or concerns.