The Challenges of Hostile Epistemology Conference

The international conference The Challenges of Hostile Epistemology is taking place on 18–19 June 2026 at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Rijeka, bringing together leading scholars from across Europe, North America, and Asia to discuss the challenges that misinformation, polarization, conspiracy theories, and digital technologies pose to democratic societies.

Over two days of keynote lectures and academic discussions, participants will explore topics including democratic self-correction, epistemic trust, conspiracy theorizing, affective polarization, journalism and institutional responsibility, artificial intelligence and disinformation, digital epistemocracy, and the impact of algorithms on democratic life.

The conference features keynote lectures by Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt University) on The Real Problem of Civility and Chris Ranalli (VU University Amsterdam) on Liberalism and the Many Faces of Conspiracy Theorizing.

The full conference programme is available here.
For more information, please visit the official conference website.

Organized by researchers at the University of Rijeka, the event is part of the project Epistemic Democracy in a Digital Era (IP-2024-05-4113), funded by the Croatian Science Foundation.