Online Zoom Forum: Ecofeminism: The Spiritual, Ecological, Ethical and Social Foundations.
Date: Wednesday 21 October 2026.
Time: 7pm-9pm (UK time).
Event Description:
Format: There will be five talks, each of 15 minutes, followed by discussion among the speakers and the chair, followed by Q & A.
Chair:
Prof Máiréad Nic Crait:
Bio: Mairéad Nic Craith is Professor of Public Folklore at UHI. Her academic career began with a lectureship at the Institute of Irish Studies (University of Liverpool) sponsored by the Irish Government. Since then she has held Chairs in Sociology at Ulster University and in Anthropological Studies at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. Mairéad held a DAAD Professorship at the University of Göttingen as well as Honorary Professorships in Social Sciences at Exeter University and Ulster University. In 2018, Mairéad was a visiting scholar at the Celtic Studies Department in Harvard University. She has worked with international bodies such as the UN, (and UNESCO), and the European Centre for Minority Issues. Mairéad has extensive experience of peer-reviewing research in Australia, Canada, Europe and the US.
Speakers:
Dr Nadja Furlan Štante:
Title: Ecofeminist Theology of Interdependence: Reimagining Spiritual, Ecological, and Ethical Relationships in Times of Ecological Crisis and Accelerated Digitalization.
Description: This presentation explores ecofeminism as a transformative framework that brings together spiritual, ecological, ethical, and social dimensions of contemporary life in a time marked by ecological degradation and accelerated digitalization. Drawing on the perspective of ecofeminist theology, it examines how systems of domination over women, nature, and marginalized communities are interconnected and rooted in dualistic patterns of thought that separate humans from the natural world and increasingly mediate human experience through technological systems.
Particular attention will be given to the concept of interdependence as a foundation for a more inclusive and relational understanding of humanity, nature, technology, and the sacred. Ecofeminist theology offers a constructive response to contemporary ecological, social, and technological challenges by emphasizing care, reciprocity, justice, embodied existence, and responsibility toward all forms of life.
The presentation argues that the integration of ecological consciousness, spiritual wisdom, and ethical reflection is essential for navigating the complex realities of the twenty-first century. In the context of rapid digital transformation, ecofeminism provides valuable insights into how human communities can cultivate more sustainable, compassionate, and just relationships with one another, the natural environment, and emerging technologies. Ecofeminism thus emerges not only as a critical perspective but also as a constructive vision for fostering ecological resilience, social justice, and a renewed culture of care in an increasingly digital world.
Key words: Ecotheology; Ecofeminism; Ecofeminist Theology; Interdependence; Ecological Justice, Artificial Intelligence; Digitalization.
Bio: Prof. Dr. Nadja Furlan Štante is a Full Professor of Religious Studies and Research Councillor at the Institute for Philosophical and Religious Studies at the Science and Research Centre Koper (ZRS Koper), Slovenia. She also serves as Advisor to the Director of ZRS Koper. She was a Visiting Professor of Religious Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana. She is currently a lecturer at the Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, and at the Faculty of Humanities at Alma Mater Europaea – Institutum Studiorum Humanitatis.
Her research focuses on ecofeminist theology, feminist theology, philosophy of religion, ecotheology, interreligious dialogue, religion and peacebuilding, gender studies, and contemporary challenges of digitalization, artificial intelligence, and transhumanism. She has been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley.
She has authored four scholarly monographs and edited numerous international volumes. Her work has been published in leading international journals, and she regularly lectures at universities and conferences worldwide. She is a member of the international ecological and ecotheological networks ECOTHEE and SAPREJ, and serves as Vice-President of the International Ecological Research Network ECERN. She also serves on the editorial boards of the peer-reviewed academic journals Poligrafi: Journal of Religion, Mythology and Philosophy, Monitor ISH: Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the ECOTHEE Journal.
Dr. Jea Sophia Oh:
Title: Salim and Jeong: A Korean Ecofeminist Spirituality of Planetary Love and Flourishing.
Description: This presentation develops a decolonial, intersectional, and cosmological ecofeminist framework grounded in the Korean concepts of salim and jeong. While ecofeminism has long critiqued patriarchy, colonialism, and ecological domination, I argue that planetary crises require constructive visions capable of healing and renewing life. Salim—the life-enlivening practice of nurturing, healing, and sustaining life—emerged historically through women’s labor, yet it extends beyond gender as an ecological and ethical imperative for all. Jeong—an enduring relational force rooted in interdependence and shared vulnerability—serves as the connective medium linking humans, nonhuman beings, communities, and ecosystems. Together, salim and jeong challenge modern binaries and articulate a relational ontology in which no being is disposable and flourishing is fundamentally shared. I propose that they converge into a spirituality of planetary love that transforms ecofeminism from critique alone into an embodied praxis of healing, relational responsibility, and collective flourishing for the entire Earth community.
Bio: Dr. Jea Sophia Oh is Professor of Philosophy at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, specializing in Asian and comparative philosophy and theology, environmental ethics, and feminist decolonial theory. Her monograph, A Postcolonial Theology of Life: Planetarity East and West (2011), pioneers Korean ecofeminist theology by exploring A. N. Whitehead’s process thought alongside Donghak (Eastern Learning). She has also edited and co-authored influential works such as Nature’s Transcendence and Immanence (2017), Suffering and Evil in Nature (2021), Emotions in Korean Philosophy and Religion (2022), and Greening Philosophy of Religion (2024). She serves as Vice President of the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy (SACP), Chair of the International Society for Chinese Philosophy (ISCP) at the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association (APA), and Director of the Society for the Study of Process Philosophy (SSPP) at APA.
Dr Rita D. Sherma:
Title: Radical Divine Immanence: Toward an Ecofeminist Theology of Shakti and the Living Earth.
Description: Ecofeminism argues that the domination of women and the exploitation of nature arise from a shared logic of hierarchical dualism embedded in modern economic, theological, and epistemological systems. Situating this analysis within the contemporary planetary polycrisis—climate change, biodiversity loss, technocratic globalization, and gendered violence—this paper contends that ecological degradation, cultural homogenization, and the erosion of women’s autonomy are structurally interconnected.
Five ecofeminist principles frame the discussion: (1) systems of oppression are mutually reinforcing and sustained by dualistic hierarchies; (2) reductionist science and neoliberal globalization marginalize both biodiversity and embodied forms of knowledge; (3) biological and cultural diversity are co-constitutive, linking environmental justice to epistemic sovereignty; (4) relational interdependence challenges atomistic individualism and affirms ecological embeddedness; and (5) radical divine immanence offers a theological corrective to transcendental world-denying frameworks.
In constructive mode, the paper engages Hindu theology’s understanding of Shakti as dynamic, all-pervading divine power to develop an emancipatory ecotheology that affirms embodiment, sacralizes the biosphere, and preserves women’s spiritual authority. Ecological transformation, it argues, requires not only policy reform but cosmological reorientation.
Bio: Rita D. Sherma, PhD, is Core Doctoral Faculty and Founding Director of the Center for Dharma Studies at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, and previously held the Swami Vivekananda Visiting Professorship at the University of Southern California. She is Co-Chair of Sustainability 360, an interdisciplinary initiative integrating religion, theology, and sustainability studies. Sherma is the founder of the Dharma Academy of North America (DANAM) and was instrumental in establishing the Hinduism Program Unit at the American Academy of Religion. Her publications include Religion and Sustainability: Interreligious Resources, Interdisciplinary Responses; Theology Without Walls: Founding Essays; Woman and Goddess in Hinduism: Reinterpretations and Re-envisionings; Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Towards a Fusion of Horizons; and the forthcoming Oxford Companion to Hindu Theology. Her current research focuses on Hindu theology, ecofeminism, environmental ethics, and theologies of radical divine immanence.
Dr Elaine Nogueira-Godsey:
Title: The Body Is the First Territory: Decolonial Ecofeminism in Latin America.
Description: Where is ecofeminism most alive today? I answer from Latin America, where Indigenous, Black, and Mestiza women defend what communitarian feminists call cuerpo-territorio (body-territory), the sovereignty of the land and of the bodies that inhabit it, defended as a single, interconnected struggle (Paredes Carvajal 2024). Ivone Gebara (2021) names what a "sustainability" economy will not—the poor and largely Black women whose bodies it discards even as it depends on their ecological labor—the waste-pickers whose work makes the system run. From that ground I turn to two living alliances, urban agroecology led by Black and Indigenous women in the peripheries of São Paulo, and the Amazonian "March for Life," where to defend the forest is to defend the body. What holds these alliances together is not a merging of interests. Following Andrea Sempértegui (2021), I read them as “partial alliances,” a ceaseless negotiation in which Indigenous women and their ecofeminist allies transform each other's discourses, and neither is absorbed. This is coalition without annexation. Such alliances, I argue, model a practice I theorize as decological dialogue, a decolonial, ecological, and pedagogical way of listening across difference, one that holds spirituality, embodied knowledge, and land as forms of knowledge rather than dismissing them. In these alliances, spirituality does not accompany resistance. It is its language.
Bio: Elaine Nogueira-Godsey is Assistant Professor of Religion, Society, and Ecofeminism at Drew University Theological School. She holds a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Cape Town. Rooted in ecofeminist liberation theology, her research and teaching advance decolonial ecofeminism, developing decological praxis, a decolonial, ecological, and pedagogical practice of knowing and acting otherwise, centering the perspectives of women of color and of the Global South. She is completing her book, "Decolonial Ecofeminism and the Decological Path Forward. She is the chair of the Latina/o Religion, Culture and Society Unit at the American Academy of Religion.
Dr Heather Eaton:
Title: How can Ecofeminism be strengthened in the age of increasing Gender Oppression, Ecological Decline and Global Destabilization?
Description: The foundations of ecofeminism are solid. The analyses are robust and relevant. The practical applications are occurring. However, the geopolitical currents are limiting civil discourse, social change pathways, and public spaces. Misogyny is increasing, as is the manosphere and their endless exploits. Further, the instability of global political alliances, the wars, genocide and dictatorships are changing the landscape of public concerns.
The questions here are ‘where is ecofeminism in these new forms of eco-political impacts and social discourses? What can ecofeminism bring to these realities? Where can ecofeminism be effective and relevant?’ The purpose is to strengthen ecofeminism to be impactful where it is possible.
Bio: Heather Eaton, Full Professor, Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada: interdisciplinary Ph.D. in ecology, feminism and theology. Committed to integral ecology, ethics, and religious responses to ecological crises. Involved in conferences, workshops, teaching and publishing in these areas. Her authored and edited books include Earthly Things: Immanence, New Materialisms, and Planetary Thinking, with Karen Bray and Whitney Bauman, (2023); Advancing Nonviolence and Social Transformation: New Perspectives on Nonviolent Theories with Lauren Levesque (2016): The Intellectual Journey of Thomas Berry: Imagining the Earth Community (2014): Ecological Awareness: Exploring Religion, Ethics and Aesthetics, with Sigurd Bergmann (2011) : Introducing Ecofeminist Theologies ( 2005), and Ecofeminism and Globalization: Exploring Religion, Culture, Context (2003) with Lois Ann Lorentzen, plus dozens of academic articles. She is on the board of the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Environment and Culture, previously on the steering committee of the Religion and Ecology session of the American Academy of Religion, and past president of the Canadian Theological Society. Recent work includes: a) Integral ecology: b) Earth dynamics and religious imagination: c) peace and conflict studies on gender, ecology, leadership: d) animal rights: e) nonviolence, f) awe and wonder.
An archive recording will be made for the EICSP archive.
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