If your doctor injects you with a vaccine without your consent, or a stranger strokes the back of your neck on a packed train, we would think that they have wronged you, morally speaking. And we might capture this wrong by saying that they have trespassed on your body or infringed your right against bodily… Read More »New Book: Protecting Minds – The Right Against Mental Interference
Reflections on a recent Antitheses Project conversation In a recent ANTITHESES Project podcast, Dominic Wilkinson (Uehiro Oxford Institute), Brian D. Earp, and Zainab Nur (Hidden Voices UK) discuss an extended essay published in the Journal of Medical Ethics (2025) examining the unintended harms of the dominant global campaign against female genital cutting (FGC), often referred… Read More »Rethinking the Ethics and Politics of the Global Campaign Against Female Genital Cutting
By Dr Jeremy Gauntlett-Gilbert; Consultant Psychologist and student, MSt Practical Ethics Chatbots are increasingly being used to deliver an AI version of psychological therapy. Internationally, there is pressure on mental health services and a shortage of human therapists. Mental health providers have a keen interest in such AI technological solutions that might offer treatment “at… Read More »Mental Health Chatbots: on Truth and Bullshit
In recent years, museums and other cultural institutions are increasingly being asked whether they have a moral responsibility to return objects in their collections to countries, communities, families, or individuals who claim a connection to them. These debates about cultural restitution and repatriation have become increasingly visible, involving discussion of artefacts with complex histories. High-profile… Read More »Helping Museums Think About The Ethics of Cultural Restitution: Introducing The Decision Aid for the Restitution of Cultural Artefacts (DARCA)
Join this year’s cohort of MSt in Practical Ethics students – apply by 28th January to take advantage of funding opportunities. The MSt in Practical Ethics at the University of Oxford is designed for those who want to think carefully and rigorously about important ethical questions, while remaining firmly engaged with the real world. Ethics,… Read More »The MSt in Practical Ethics at Oxford University – Apply Before January 28!
The academic study of ethics is full of ideas that shape how we think about the world, and many of them come from women whose work deserves to be better known. Women writers, thinkers and ethicists have contributed for millennia alongside their male counterparts, yet their work has been often forgotten or side-lined. In our… Read More »Celebrating Women in Ethics #WiE
I am just back from a celebration of the 20th anniversary of IDEA: the Ethics Centre, at the University of Leeds. (IDEA stands for ‘Inter-disciplinary Ethics Applied’.) IDEA was founded by Chris Megone, an old friend from my graduate days, and is now directed by Simon Kirchin. The centre has achieved a huge amount in… Read More »Congratulations to ‘IDEA’ in Leeds!
Secretary of State for Justice Shabana Mahmood is reportedly looking into a potential ‘national rollout of voluntary chemical castration for sex offenders’. The proposal is one of the recommendations outlined in the recently published Independent Sentencing Review led by former Lord Chancellor David Gauke, commissioned to investigate ‘the prison overcrowding crisis and to consider alternative… Read More »On plans to extend use of chemical castration for sex offenders in England
By Dr Jeremy Gauntlett-Gilbert – student on the MSt Practical Ethics programme The advent of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence has opened up new possibilities for health research. Specifically, these techniques could be let loose on ‘big data’, such as the collective data of healthcare organisations (including the NHS), and would likely reveal new insights… Read More »Profiting from Misery: Is There Something Different About Healthcare Data?
Undergraduate Finalist paper in the 2025 National Uehiro Oxford Essay Prize in Practical Ethics. By Rahul Lakhanpaul, University of Edinburgh.
