2025 Keynote Speakers
Keynote speakers
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Ethics in Diversity – Intercultural and Interreligious Ethics
Societas Ethica’s 61th Annual Conference 2025
August 21–24 2025, Hofgeismar, Germany
Associate Prof. Dr. Angela Roothaan
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Keynote Lecture: Transcultural Pluralism and Ethics
Angela Roothaan is an Associate Professor whose research focuses on Intercultural and African philosophy, criticism of modernity, spirituality, and spirit ontologies. Her methodological approaches include critical theory, postcolonial theory, hermeneutics, deconstructivism, and pragmatism.
She supervises PhD candidates working on projects in African and Intercultural Philosophy, Continental Philosophy, and Philosophy of Race. Since 2020, she has coordinated the Graduate Winter Course at VU University on Intercultural Philosophy and Postcolonial Theory. At the Master's level, she teaches Social and Political Philosophy, Environmental Humanities, and Philosophy of Culture and Governance (from a perspective of Race Theory). At the Bachelor's level, she teaches Intercultural Philosophy (Diversifying), the Bachelor Thesis Seminar, and Intercultural Philosophy for non-philosophy students.
Beyond her research and teaching, Roothaan seeks to bring philosophy out of the ivory tower by maintaining a blog, delivering public lectures, and engaging with philosophers and philosophy students worldwide through social media.
Prof. Dr. Anne Hege Grung
Oslo University
Keynote Lecture: Gender and Interreligious Dialogue
Anne Hege Grung is Dean of Research and Professor in Interreligious Studies at the Faculty of Theology University of Oslo. Her research fields are Feminist hermeneutics in Muslim-Christian relations, Women and interreligious relations, Plural chaplaincy and spiritual care. Grung is presently leading the Master program “Leadership, Ethics and Counselling”, she is chair of the European Society for Intercultural Theology and Interreligious Studies (ESITIS), and member of the steering group for the program unit Interfaith and Interreligious Studies in the American Academy of Religion. In 2021 she was elected chair of The Norwegian Association for Women’s Rights.
Prof. Dr. Azza Karam,
University of Notre Dame (IL)
Keynote Lecture: International Politics and Ethical Challenges in a Multicultural World
Azza Karam is a member of the United Nations’ Secretary General High Level Advisory Board on Multilateralism, an Affiliate Professor at the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, and has served for many years as a Secretary General Emerita of Religions for Peace International.
She served for nearly two decades in the United Nations (in UNDP and UNFPA), where she Coordinated the Arab Human Development Reports, co-founded and Chaired the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion – with over 20 UN system bodies – and founded and convened its Multi Faith Advisory Council, as part of the 750 global NGO database she coordinated. Apart from the work in the United States, she has worked with other intergovernmental and international organisations such as the OSCE, the EU, and International IDEA in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and East and Central Asia, where she created and managed global programmes on Women and Politics, Democracy and/In the Middle East, and Applied Research on Democracy.
She has lectured and taught in various universities, including West Point Military Academy (from 2002 to 2018). She has published widely, and was translated into several languages (on political Islam, gender and women’s rights, Human Rights, democracy, conflict, peacemaking, and education).
She has received multiple awards, including for her work on/in the United Nations, as well as in/on Interfaith work and Culture. She was awarded an honorary Degree by John Cabot University in 2022. Born in Egypt, Azza is also a citizen of the Netherlands.