Two relevant conferences /  by Zachary Pirtle

INES Workshop 2027

International Network for Engineering Studies 2027 virtual meeting.

How do engineers define, study, and respond to existential threats? And what should engineering studies contribute to that work?

The International Network for Engineering Studies invites scholars, engineers, educators, graduate students, and anyone else who thinks seriously about engineering practice to join us online on Thursday 14 and Friday 15 January 2027, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm US Eastern both days.

 Visit the Workshop Website

 Artificial intelligence, climate change, pandemics, and the erosion of democratic institutions are routinely called existential threats. Engineers design, operate, and evaluate the systems at the center of each of these threats. Yet the public debates about those threats seldom involve engineers and engineering studies scholars.

This workshop gives us a chance to ask what engineers already do about existential threats, and what engineering studies can add. How do engineers define and measure an existential threat? Which insights do engineers bring that other fields miss? Where do professional societies, codes, and curricula help, and where do those same societies, codes, and curricula get in the way? And what would it take for engineering studies scholars to join that work rather than observe it?

The first day takes stock of where we are. The second turns from diagnosis to action, with colleagues from engineering practice and engineering education.

IEEE Ethics 2027


IEEE announced a call for papers for IEEE Ethics 2027, to be held in Duke, North Carolina USA. Abstracts due January 11th. 
ETHICS-2027: Cultivating Ethical Technology: Character, Leadership, and Education

ETHICS-2027 centers on the challenge of cultivating technology that serves society responsibly, with particular attention to trust, equity, sustainability, and public well-being. As artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, digital platforms, biotechnology, and other emerging technologies increasingly shape society, engineers and technology professionals face ethical questions that extend well beyond technical performance. The conference will explore how character formation, ethical leadership, and ethics education can prepare engineers and technology professionals to navigate these challenges and guide responsible innovation. Bringing together perspectives from engineering, computing, education, philosophy, the social sciences, industry, and public policy, ETHICS-2027 will examine how we develop technologies in ways that advance their positive social impact through education, personal growth, and ethical leadership.

ETHICS-2027 Conference Topics include but are not limited to:

● Character, Professional Integrity, and Ethical Responsibility in Engineering and Technology
● Ethical Leadership in Technology Development, Governance, and Industry
● Ethics Education in Engineering, Computing, and STEM
● Social, Ethical, and Environmental Implications of Emerging Technologies
● Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Ethical Decision Making
● Public Trust, Transparency, and Accountability in Technology Systems
● Community Education and Engagement on Ethical Engineering and Technology Issues
● Perspectives on Technology Ethics from the Humanities and Social Sciences

fPET 2026 Conference Summary /  by Zachary Pirtle

Newsletter summary from IEEE SSIT August Newsletter. (A great resource!)

By Tonatiuh Rodriguez-Nikl (Professor of Civil Engineering, California State University - Los Angeles)

The Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology (fPET) was held from 9-11 June 2026 at the University of Maryland, bringing together an international group of philosophers, reflective engineers, and science and technology scholars; SSIT President Murty Polavarapu was also present. The forum offered a combination of keynote speakers, panel discussion, and concurrent presentations and was co-chaired by Zachary G. Pirtle (ASU CSPO), David Tomblin (UMCP) and Guru Madhavan (NAE). The conference website – including the schedule and abstracts – can be found here. It was hosted by the Science, Technology and Society programs in UMCP’s Clark School of Engineering. 

fPET 2026 conference photo


Ethics formed a large part of the conversation, including nuts-and-bolts discussions about improving ethics education as well as broad questions related to the direction of technological development. For instance, retired engineering professors Thomas Siller and Gearold Johnson proposed moving from an anthropocentric to a biocentric framework in engineering decisions and George Percivall, who is active in IEEE standards, offered ideas for how philosophy can inform socio-technical systems in general. Not surprisingly, AI also formed a large part of the conversation. Perhaps the most impactful session on this topic was a panel of thinkers about, and users of, AI, including recent engineering graduates and current students.

Public policy was also a salient topic. There was a dialogue with policy leaders – including the philosopher Andrew Light, who had been a high ranking policy maker at the Department of Energy- as well as the philosophers Diana Martin, Michael Gifford and STS scholar Matthew Wisnioski. This panel was valuable for understanding how engineering is shaped at the governmental level. There was also a presentation on participatory technology assessment, led by ASU/Mahmud Farooque’s team, that illustrated both the how and why behind understanding and including the public’s opinion in the policy dialogue.


This is a great conference for reflective engineers to nurture their need to think more deeply about their craft. fPET is typically held every two years. Be on the lookout for the next conference. You can subscribe to the email list by clicking the button.

Advice on publishing fPET-related work /  by Zachary Pirtle

This is my personal advice for engineers and philosophers who want to publish fPET-related work.

An informal aside first: Where to publish often depends on what your goals are.

·       fPET’s mission is about having engineers and philosophers engage for the mutual benefit of both: no one has all the answers. Having engineers get together and actually engage with philosophers and other humanities and social science scholars is not only fun, but it’s also fertile ground for new ideas and theory. And it can be a place to reflect on what we want the culture of engineering to be, too.

·       Peer review is often the coin of the realm for those building a career in academia, and it conveys a rigor and quality that others can cite. It can at times be maddening to push interdisciplinary work through journals, especially if reviewers are coming from different disciplines or have a hard time engaging the work on its own terms. To publish in a discipline-specific journal can often require a lot of dedicated focus on learning the background literature that reviewers in that journal expect.

·       If you want to change the culture of engineering, it can be challenging to decide on what or where you should write. Peer review can be a drawback in that respect. Many practicing engineers, especially in industry, don’t have access to peer-reviewed journals, and generally are so busy that they wouldn’t take the time to read a dense peer reviewed article even if they had access to it.

If you want research to actually inform the direction of engineering in society, it’s hard. I list below some ‘big think’ venues like Issues that encourage reflection. But even there it can be hard to get engineers to take the time and read. (This is in part why in-person spaces like fPET can be so important.)

Engineering audience venues for publications:

Many engineering societies have magazines or publication venues that would be interested in fPET related work. The IEEE Society for Social Implications of Technology (SSIT) is particularly prolific in this regard:

·       IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, which is also peer reviewed, is a wonderful venue for publishing interdisciplinary work and reflections.

·       The IEEE SSIT Newsletter is a great place to share news of events and occasionally contains think pieces and reflections.

If you’re an engineer approaching philosophical issues for the first time, exploring venues like these may be an ideal entry point, and have the virtue of also being read by actual engineers!

If framed properly, fPET research could be submitted to engineering journals. Contributing research in these areas can be very field-specific, so it’s hard to have universal advice there. (Please do share if you publish fPET-related research in engineering journals; this piece in Design Science was fun but challenging to do).

‘Big Think’ Engineering and Science-focused venues for publication:

The quarterly magazine Issues in Science and Technology, published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and Arizona State University, is a wonderful place for reflective research and has published many works by engineers and philosophers over the years, including my favorite piece by Carl Mitcham on the true grand challenge of engineering. Issues also has the feature that it is read by engineers and scientists in the federal government and by science policy leaders in Washington, D.C. This might be one of the best places to publish fPET-related research.

The New Atlantis, edited by Ari Schulman, describes itself as “A Journal of Technology and Society.” It publishes reflective essays on technology, engineering and culture.

For philosophy-focused or science and society-focused peer-reviewed journals:

·       Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology has long been a mainstay of the Society for Philosophy and Technology.

·       Philosophy & Technology, founded in 2011, publishes a great deal of strong work in the field.

·       Engineering Studies, the journal of the International Network for Engineering Studies and currently edited by Jessica Smith from Colorado School of Mines, has also been taking a renewed interest in philosophy of engineering questions.

·       Science and Engineering Ethics is one of many journals that touches on ethical issues.

·       IEEE’s Transactions on Engineering and Society is a peer-reviewed journal.

·       Several philosophy of science journals, such as British Journal for Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Science itself, could be open to engineering.

·       There are also many science, technology and society (STS) journals, drawing on the long lineage of STS scholarship that exists.

As noted above, peer review for an engineer in these journals might involve a bit of a learning curve!

Springer’s Philosophy of Engineering and Technology (POET) Series

The Springer POET editors have been prolific and thoughtful and published many books in the POET series. fPET conference co-chairs have often published edited book volumes coming out of the fPET conference series. For a list of fPET specific books, see the end of this fPET community page.

As the lead editor for the 2021 book volume, I can say that there are a lot of benefits for publishing in an fPET anthology. I was able to steer the book to potentially be more readable to the broader audiences of fPET. I particularly valued working with engineers, like Daniel McLaughlin, who wrote an interdisciplinary paper on engineering judgment, And Springer had a thoughtful process for getting a blind peer review of the book. There can be drawbacks, though. Depending on whether you need formal peer review publications for purposes like academic tenure, publishing in a highly ranked peer reviewed journal may be a better strategy. And it can still be hard to get engineers or policy leaders to take the time to read a POET volume chapter.

Other notables:

There are also a variety of science policy and interdisciplinary journals that can be valuable venues for this work, including Research Policy, Science and Public Policy, Journal of Responsible Innovation, and many others.

 -Zachary Gallagher Pirtle