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Justifying Exclusion From Public Sport
Graduate Highly Commended paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Edward Lamb. During the 2024 Paris Olympics, the inclusion of Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde generated serious controversy. Van de Velde had previously been sentenced to four years in British jail, convicted of child rape.[1] After…
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Bridging the Gaps: How Language Models Can Connect Ethics, Science, and Policy
What this post explores: At its best, practical ethics addresses normative questions with philosophical rigor while remaining grounded in empirical evidence and offering meaningful input for policy. However, the field frequently faces challenges in demonstrating clear connections between normative analysis, empirical and policy research. The Structural Disconnect The challenge is partly due to the…
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Bring Back Shame: Does the Ethical Value of Shame Justify Shaming?
Undergraduate Highly Commended paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Nicole Chinenyenwa Oboko. I have always been told that if a person has nothing nice to say, they should say nothing at all. For most of my life, I’ve upheld this belief. A decent person, as part of a decent…
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The Duty to Have Courage: Developing the Theory of Epistemic Injustice
Undergraduate Highly Commended paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Artur Littner, University of Lancaster.
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Silencing Queer Signals: How Cultural Misuse Prevents the Expression of Queerness
Undergraduate Finalist paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Elizabeth McCabe, University of Oxford.
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The Doctor Will Speak as You Prefer? How AI Could Personalize Medical Communication
(This blog post was originally published in the JME Forum) By Hazem Zohny, Jemima Winfried Allen, Dominic Wilkinson, and Julian Savulescu. When you go to the doctor, there’s little telling what kind of communicator you’ll get. Some doctors are on the paternalistic side, telling you what you should do without much discussion. Others just give…
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How Does Social Media Pose a Threat to Autonomy?
Undergraduate Finalist paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Rahul Lakhanpaul, University of Edinburgh.
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Promises and Consent: The Moral Permissibility of Accepting a Promise to Perform an Act That Requires Contemporaneous Consent
Graduate Finalist paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics.
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National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics
The National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics is an annual competition held in the spring. It is open to all undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in UK universities and students are invited to enter by submitting an essay of up to 2000 words on any topic relevant to practical ethics. The 2025 Essay…
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Banning first cousin marriage would be eugenic and ineffective
Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford A bill that proposes to ban first-cousin marriage in the UK will receive its second reading in the House of Commons on March 7. The bill, proposed by Conservative former minister Richard Holden, follows the introduction of a ban on cousin marriages that came into effect in Norway in 2023…