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Practical Ethics provides a daily ethical analysis of the latest developments in science, technology and other current affairs.
Open Access Resources
The Centre is committed to raising awareness of ethical issues in the broader community and stimulating debate in the public arena. To this end, the resources listed on these pages are freely available to the public, and include journal articles and online lectures (MP3 and MP4).
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Current Visitors
Academic Visitor Programmes
Information on our Academic Visitor Programmes, including how to apply, can be found here.
Past Visitors
See our Past Visitors.
Heather Bradshaw-Martin, University of Bristol
Heather’s PhD (University of Bristol) work on enhancement and disability developed the concept of morphological freedom to include morphological disenfranchisement. She is interested in subjective theories of well-being and epistemic issues arising from the use of qualitative, and other interdisciplinary research methods, in philosophy, especially in ethics. Her main research interests lie in the generalisation of ethical theories beyond human nature and their appropriateness for guiding the design of organisms and their ethical and cooperative systems. Heather’s original training is in engineering and she also has interests in philosophy of science, especially philosophy of physics, and in engineering ethics, especially robotics. Heather has been associated with the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics in various capacities since 2004.
Hossein Dabbagh, University of Reading
Hossein Dabbagh is a PhD Philosophy candidate at the University of Reading, UK. Hossein is a Recognized Student at the University of Oxford for Hilary and Trinity terms 2013, based at the Uehiro Centre where Dr Regina Rini is his Academic Advisor for this period. His thesis is on the epistemology of moral intuitions and empirical moral psychology (currently investigating the views of Sinnott-Armstrong, Green, Knob, Doris and Stich) and he is also working on Moral Reasons, Normativity, and Meta-Ethics more generally. In his first and second years of doctoral study, Hossein explored intuitionism under the supervision of Professors Philip Stratton-Lake and Brad Hooker.
Dr Helen de Cruz, University of Leuven, Belgium
Helen de Cruz is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Foundation Flanders, University of Leuven, and a Templeton Fellow at the University of Oxford. She completed her PhD thesis on the philosophy of mathematics in 2007. Her current interests include philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of religion. For the Templeton Fellowship, she investigates the cognitive basis of intuitions in natural theology.
Dr Johan de Smedt, Ghent University, Belgium
Johan de Smedt is a Research Fellow at Ghent University. His PhD thesis entitled "Common Minds, Uncommon Thoughts: A philosophical anthropological investigation of uniquely human creative behaviour", with an emphasis on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study, was defended in 2011. He works on the implications of cognitive science of religion for philosophy of religion, and on the cognitive basis of scientific practice.
Professor Anthony Skelton, University of Western Ontario
Anthony Skelton is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. He specializes in the history of ethics, normative ethics and practical ethics. Anthony is currently working on a series of papers on the nature of welfare. His main ambition is to work out a theory of welfare for children and the implications such a view might have for a variety of issues, including the use of children in medical research, children’s rights, and parental duties. Recent publications have appeared in Utilitas, Journal of the History of Philosophy and Underivative Duty: British Moral Philosophers from Sidgwick to Ewing (Oxford, 2011). Forthcoming publications include the textbook Bioethics In Canada (Oxford, 2013) and the article "Utilitarianism, Welfare, Children".
Dr Mariarosaria Taddeo, University of Hertfordshire
Mariarosaria Taddeo's primary research interests are Information and Computer Ethics, Ethics of Conflicts and Philosophy of Information. She holds a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Hertfordshire, where she is working on Informational Conflicts and their ethical implications. She obtained a European PhD in Philosophy at the University of Padua. Her PhD thesis concerned the epistemic and ethical implications of the occurrences of Trust in artificial distributed systems.
Pablo Aguayo Westwood (University of Chile)
Pablo Aguayo Westwood is an Assistant Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Faculty of Law at the University of Chile. He is in the process of completing his PhD in Ethics and Democracy at the University of Valencia. Pablo is studying “the sense of justice” and its role in Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. He is interested in understanding the reason why Rawls preferred using some ideas of moral psychology rather than moral philosophy and how it affects his theory. Pablo is also interested in moral intuition and its importance towards moral theory.
Areas of specialisation: Moral Philosophy, Epistemology and Philosophy of Science.
Areas of interest: Social Justice, Moral and Political Problem of Equality
James Williams, Oxford Internet Institute
James Williams is a doctoral student at the Oxford Internet Institute and Balliol College studying the ethical design of persuasive technologies (i.e. technologies that are aimed at changing the behaviors or attitudes of users). For the past six years he has worked at Google, most recently as Global Search Lead, where he received the Founders’ Award (the company’s highest honor) for his work on Google’s search advertising systems. His interests include human-centered technology design, the psychology of goals and intentions, emerging technologies such as augmented reality and 3D printing, uses of technology to enhance life measurement/optimization, experimental philosophy, and games. A native of Texas, James studied English Literature and Classics as an undergrad and later earned a Master’s in Human-Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Washington.
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