CFP | Luhmann Conference 2027

Luhmann Conference 2027

Theme: Niklas Luhmann at 100: Person, Personality, and Personhood. Observed with Social Systems Theory

Venue: Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Dates: 14-16 September 2027 (pre-conference dinner on 13 September 2027)

Programme Committee:

• Dr Nico Buitendag, University of the Free State, South Africa
• Lars Clausen, UCL University College, Odense, Denmark
• Professor Michal Kaczmarczyk, University of Gdansk, Poland
• Professor Franz Kasper Krönig, Cologne University of Applied Sciences, Germany
• Dr Vincent Lien, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom*
• Professor Steffen Roth, Excelia Business School, La Rochelle, France, and University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
• Professor Krešimir Žažar, University of Zagreb, Croatia*

*Corresponding members: vwsl2@cam.ac.uk and kzazar@m.ffzg.hr

Conference Theme

In December 2027, Niklas Luhmann would have turned one hundred. Few social theorists have done more to decentre the human subject (Teubner, 2001: 39f). And yet, within his systems theory, there remains a place for a curious figure: the person.

Neither organism nor psyche, neither substance nor agent, the person in Luhmann’s (1991) work emerges as a communicative form—an address to which expectations are attributed, responsibilities stabilised, and actions imputed. The person is not the human being; it is a social construct that makes human—and other—beings communicatively relevant. It condenses social expectations and appears as the condensate of communicative attributions (Luhmann, 1991; Roth, 2013). It constructs responsibility without presupposing personal “autopoiesis”.

This centenary conference honours the lifework of Niklas Luhmann and, precisely because a birthday is a deeply personal affair, reopens the question of the person in his theoretical architecture and beyond.

At the same time, the 2027 conference explicitly builds upon the 2026 conference theme, Meaning. Observed with …, and the multidimensional model of meaning discussed thereat (Luhmann, 1995a; 1995b; 2012; 2013; Roth, 2021; Roth and Kaczmarczyk, 2026).

If meaning operates across multiple dimensions—factual, temporal, social, and potentially modal, motivational, and spatial—then the person may be observed not as a static concept but as a multidimensional condensation of meaning.

Under the guiding theme of Person, Personality, and Personhood Observed with Social Systems Theory, the conference invites contributions that analyse the person across the dimensions of meaning.

The Person in the Factual Dimension: What is a person?

In the factual dimension (this/that), the person appears as object of differentiation. Across the social sciences, the concept of the person has returned with force. Debates on identity, recognition, authenticity, subjectivity, agency, and personhood animate contemporary theory. At the same time, posthumanism, actor-network theory, legal theory, AI research, and organisational studies challenge anthropocentric assumptions (de Vaujany et al., 2024; Ehrnström-Fuentes et al., 2025; Ergene and Calás, 2023; Tallberg et al., 2024; Watson and Brezovec, 2025; Watson et al., 2025). From a systems-theoretical perspective, persons may be analysed as products or results of social differentiation:

• Segmentation: persons as family members, gender roles, age roles
• Centre–periphery: persons as urban vs rural inhabitants
• Stratification: persons defined by estate, class, or rank
• Functional differentiation: persons linked to professions (the theme of the Luhmann Conference 2017), offices, and roles.

In each case, persons appear as stabilised this/that distinctions within differentiated social orders. The factual question thus becomes: What is a person under different regimes of social differentiation?

The Person in the Temporal Dimension: When is a Person a Person?

In the temporal dimension (before/after), the person becomes a problem of endurance, transformation, and mortality. Luhmann’s late reflections—including his farewell lecture (Luhmann, 1994), often read as a departure from the Theatrum Mundi concept—return to the “old-European” concepts of person, action, role, and performance only to restage the scene for society as the encompassing nexus of communication. Yet even modern society seems to insist on and require persons, whether living or deceased, as bearers of roles and responsibilities. As Luhmann’s theory reminds us, organism and psyche cease with death. What persists is the person as communicative reference (Roth, 2013). His own centenary thus raises a specifically temporal question:

• How are persons reproduced across time?
• How is posthumous personhood constructed?
• How do citation, canonisation, and memorial cultures stabilise intellectual personhood?
• How does biography become communicative address?

In this dimension, the person appears as a temporal condensation: neither eternal substance nor ephemeral event, but a structure that survives through attribution.

The Person in the Social Dimension: Who—or What—Qualifies as a Person?

In the social dimension (ego/alter), the person becomes a question of inclusion, attribution, and recognition. Who counts as a person? Who qualifies as addressee of communication? Modern societies routinely recognise:

• Natural persons
• Legal persons
• Corporate persons
• Organisational actors (Grothe-Hammer, 2020; Grothe-Hammer and Rachlitz, 2025)

Pre-modern and modern societies alike have recognised non-human personhood, including geographical features, spirits, animals, cities, and corporations (Pors, 2021; Pors et al., 2019).

Contemporary developments intensify these dynamics:

• Rivers and ecosystems are recognised as rights-bearing entities (Reeves and Peters, 2021; Buitendag, 2025a; 2025b)
• Planetary health discourses attribute illness and agency to Earth (Roth and Valentinov, 2023)
• The proliferation of AI systems that—or who—are addressed as agents (Watson et al., 2025)

Politics seeks to steer persons (Luhmann, 1997; Kleve et al., 2020). Love and intimacy presuppose persons (Piazzesi and Blais, 2026). Law grants rights and obligations to them. The social dimension thus foregrounds the question: Who can be addressed as a person—and under which communicative conditions?

The Motivational Dimension: Why Persons Count as Persons?

Closely linked to the social dimension is the motivational dimension (intent/accident). To attribute personhood is to attribute motives. Yet attribution of motive presupposes the possibility of motion in the sense automotion. Are persons autopoietic systems? Or merely allopoietic footprints of communication? Can motives meaningfully be attributed to persons as much as to

• Organisations?
• AI systems?
• Ghosts?
• Rivers?

What happens when attribution of motive extends beyond human beings? This dimension invites renewed discussion of autopoiesis, allopoiesis, and responsibility in communication. Motive attribution also invites renewed engagement with psychic systems and consciousness. While the person is a communicative form, it remains structurally coupled with psychic processes operating in thought, perception, and experience. How might we distinguish more sharply between person and personality? How does identity formation unfold across psychic and social processes? We invite contributions that draw on psychology, psychotherapy, psychiatry, and related disciplines to explore how identity formation unfolds across psychic and social processes, and how patterns of consciousness interact with communicative constructions of persons and personalities.

The Modal Dimension: How Society Observes Persons and Personalities?

In the modal dimension (thus/otherwise), the person appears as a manner of observation. The “old-European” Theatrum Mundi (Luhmann, 1994) tradition frames persons as actors performing roles. But are there alternative modes of observing personhood beyond the semantics of the probably first mass medium of human society? If so, then how might we observe the persons, personality, and personhood otherwise.

The Spatial Dimension: Where Is the Person After All?

Although less explicit in classical systems theory, the spatial dimension (here/there) may be woven into analyses of centre–periphery, inclusion–exclusion, and territorialised personhood. Persons may be constituted differently depending on spatial regimes of observation:

• Urban vs rural
• National vs transnational
• Tele-mediated vs physically co-present interaction
• Persons as agents or footprints of communication

Where is personhood stabilised—and where does it dissolve?

Special Interest Topic 1: Personhood Beyond the Human

Across all dimensions, the question of non-human personhood recurs. What counts as a person when:

• Magic and legal fiction intersect?
• Corporations, Saints, or “the four walls” of a church acquire rights? (Coleman, 1994)
• Ecosystems become legal subjects? (Reeves and Peters, 2021; Buitendag, 2025a; 2025b)
• AI systems participate in authorship (Watson et al., 2025)?

Do such developments signal expansion of personhood—or reactivation of animistic semantics within modern societies?

Special Interest Topic 2: Persons in Organisations, Organisations as Persons

Organisations presuppose persons as decision premises (Grothe-Hammer, 2020). Membership, responsibility, and accountability rely on personal attribution. At the same time, organisations themselves are treated as legal persons and members within meta-organisational arrangements (Grothe-Hammer and Rachlitz, 2025). This paradox invites renewed analysis of:

• Personal and transpersonal attribution regimes
• Personality and responsibility
• Organisational autopoiesis or allopoiesis
• Organised versus institutionalised personhood

Bridging 2026 and 2027

By observing person, personality, and personhood through multiple meaning dimensions, the 2027 conference extends the 2026 exploration of meaning as medium without an outside (Luhmann, 1995a; 1995b; Tække, 2025). If meaning is structured along several dimensions, then the person appears not as a unitary entity but as a multidimensional condensation of meaning within a functionally differentiated society.

Call for Contributions

We invite theoretical and empirical contributions that observe person, personality, and personhood through one or more dimensions of meaning. Papers may engage with:

• Social differentiation
• Temporal endurance and mortality
• Attribution and inclusion
• Legal and environmental personhood
• Organisational personhood
• AI and digital personae
• Autopoiesis and motive attribution
• Modalities of observing the person

The aim of these personal explorations is not a private celebration of the person of Niklas Luhmann, but a public theoretical encounter between his perspectives on person, personality, and personhood and those of neighbouring or contrasting paradigms.

Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions that engage theoretically, empirically, or conceptually with the theme of the person, personality, and personhood. Contributions may range from close readings of Luhmann’s work to contemporary theoretical interventions and empirical investigations.

Further details regarding submission deadlines and revision timelines will follow.

Best paper award

The Next Society Corporation is pleased to sponsor an award of EUR 500 for the best paper submitted to the Luhmann Conference 2027.

References:

• Buitendag, N. (2025a). Environmental law and systems theory. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 42(2), 297-307.
• Buitendag, N. (2025b). The Structure of Legal Evolution: Applying Philosophy of Science to Legal Philosophy in Earth System Law. Law and Critique, 1-22.
• Coleman, J. S. (1974). Power and the Structure of Society. New York: Norton.
• de Vaujany, F.-X., Gherardi, S., & Silva, P. (eds.) (2024): Organization Studies and Posthumanism: Towards a More-than-Human World. London: Routledge.
• Ehrnström-Fuentes, M., Böhm, S., Hagolani-Albov, S., & Tesfaye, L. A. (2025). Multispecies organizing in the web of life: Ethico-political dynamics of matters of care in ecologies-in-place. Business Ethics Quarterly, 35(4), 525-554.
• Ergene, S., & Calás, M. B. (2023). Becoming naturecultural: Rethinking sustainability for a more-than-human world. Organization Studies, 44(12), 1961-1986.
• Grothe‐Hammer, M. (2020). Membership and contributorship in organizations: An update of modern systems theory. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 37(3), 482-495.
• Grothe-Hammer, M., & Rachlitz, K. (2025). Multi-organizational couplings of societal domains: a typology of meta-organizations in a functionally differentiated society. Theory and Society, 54(4), 547-577.
• Kleve, H., Roth, S., & Simon, F. B. (2020). Lockdown: Das Anhalten der Welt: Debatte zur Domestizierung von Wirtschaft, Politik und Gesundheit. Carl-Auer Verlag.
• Luhmann, N. (1991). Die Form “Person”. Soziale Welt, 42(2), 166-175.
• Luhmann, N., & Fuchs, S. (1994). “What is the Case?” and” What Lies behind It?” The Two Sociologies and the Theory of Society. Sociological Theory,  12(2), 126-139.
• Luhmann, N. (1995a). The paradoxy of observing systems. Cultural Critique, (31), 37-55.
• Luhmann, N. (1995b). Social systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Luhmann, N. (1997). Limits of steering. Theory, Culture & Society, 14(1), 41-57.
• Luhmann, N. (2012). Theory of Society, Volume 1. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Luhmann, N. (2013). Theory of Society, Volume 2. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Piazzesi, C., & Blais, M. (2026). What Program for Love in the 21st Century? Thinking With and Beyond Luhmann. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, DOI: 10.1002/sres.70032.
• Pors, J. G. (2021). A ghostly encounter and the questions we might learn from it. Culture and Organization, 27(4), 289-301.
• Pors, J. G., Olaison, L., & Otto, B. (2019). Ghostly matters in organizing. Ephemera. Critical Dialogs on Organization, 19(1), 1-29.
• Reeves, J. A., & Peters, T. D. (2021). Responding to anthropocentrism with anthropocentrism: The biopolitics of environmental personhood. Griffith Law Review, 30(3), 474-504.
• Roth, S. (2013). Dying is only human: The case death makes for the immortality of the person. Tamara Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, 11(2), 35-39.
• Roth and Kaczmarczyk (2026). The questions of observation. Expanding the dimensions of meaning in Niklas Luhmann’s theory programme. Manuscript, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.19724.99203.
• Roth, S., & Valentinov, V. (2023). Health beyond medicine. A planetary theory extension. Sociology of Health & Illness, 45(2), 331-345.
• Tallberg, L., Huopalainen, A., & García-Rosell, J. C. (2024). Beyond anthropocentrism: A call to action for multispecies inclusivity. Business & Society, 64(7), 1263-1268.
• Teubner, G. (2001). Economics of gift—Positivity of justice: The mutual paranoia of Jacques Derrida and Niklas Luhmann. Theory, Culture & Society, 18(1), 29-47.
• Watson, S., & Brezovec, E. (2025). Autopoietic Ecology: Rethinking Systems, Meaning, and Matter. Manuscript, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.18462.24649.
• Watson, S., Brezovec, E., & Romic, J. (2025). The role of generative AI in academic and scientific authorship: an autopoietic perspective. AI & Society, 40(5), 3225-3235.

Publication opportunities

A selection of papers presented at the Luhmann Conference 2027 will be invited for submission to dedicated special issues of Kybernetes and Theory, Culture & Society.

Previous Luhmann Conferences have been or are currently being published in edited volumes or special issues of journals such as  

• Roth S. and Charlton, M. (in progress). From Social Systems Theory to Systemic Practice: Tools for Management, Consulting, and Organisation Research, Systemic Practice and Action Research.
• Roth S. and Sales A. (in progress). Programmes in management and organisation. Observed with social systems theory, Management Decision.
• Roth S., Stingl T., and Zazar K. (2026). Coding society. Programmatic encounters between information systems and social theory, Information Technology & People, 39(6).
• Roth S. and Valentinov V. (2026). Reprogramming. Observed with social systems theory, Journal of Organizational Change Management, 39(1).
• Roth S., Watson S., Dahms H., and Atanesyan A. (2025). Guiding distinctions of social theory. Current Sociology, 73(4).
• Steffen Roth, Lars Clausen, Margit Neisig, and Augusto Sales (2025): Guiding Distinctions of Management and Organisation Research, Managment Revue, 35(1).
• Roth S. (2025), Environments and Guiding Distinctions. Observed with social systems theory, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 42(2).
• Roth S., Zazar K., Clausen L., and Stingl de Vasconcelos Guedes T. (2024, Scientific Communication. Observed with social systems theory, Systemic Practice and Action Research, 37(2004).
• Roth S., Laursen K., and Harste G. (2021), Moral communication. Observed with social systems theory, Kybernetes, 51(5).
• Roth S., Heidingsfelder M., Clausen L., and Laursen K. (2021), George Spencer Brown’s “Design with the NOR”. With related essays, Bingley: Emerald.
• Febbrajo A. and Harste G. (2013). Law and Intersystemic Communication. Understanding “Structural Coupling”. London: Ashgate 2013

Historical background

In the 1980s, Hans-Ulrich Gumbrecht and Ludwig Pfeiffer co-organised a number of conferences at the Inter-University Centre of Post-Graduate Studies (IUC) in Dubrovnik in the former Yugoslavia, now Croatia. Starting in 1981, Luhmann attended several of these conferences. Conference proceedings were published in a series of five rather big volumes at the important Suhrkamp Verlag (Der Diskurs der Literatur- und Sprachhistorie, 1983; Epochenschwellen und Epochenstrukturen im Diskurs der Literatur- und Sprachhistorie, 1985; Stil, 1986; Materialität der Kommunikation, 1988; Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche, 1991). Many of these works were dedicated to semantic history and to a system theory of art. 
The IUC was shelled during the siege of Dubrovnik in 1991, and for some years the conferences could not take place. Today, the IUC has been completely restored both physically and in spirit. 
The series resumed subsequent to the complete restoration of the IUC premises and, in turning increasingly international, became known under the sub-headlines “Observed with Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory” or “Observed with social systems theory”, respectively.