As one of the central areas of philosophy, ethics at the University of Birmingham is a field with a rich breadth of research talent. We have therefore developed a research cluster dedicated to the areas of our academic staff’s expertise in this field. These include metaethics, normative ethics, bioethics, and global ethics. Amongst health and happiness, metaphysics, philosophy of mind and philosophy religion and philosophy of language, this forms one of the department’s four research clusters, all of which have substantial research links between them.
Some research topics that are of particular interest to the cluster include:
In bioethics and global ethics:
-
Moral Neocolonialism and Global Ethics
-
Ethics of Embryo Donation
-
Capability approaches in Global Ethics
-
Healthcare ethics
-
Human rights
In metaethics:
-
Moral explanation
-
Ethical naturalism and non-naturalism
-
Non-cognitivism and ethical expressivism
-
Minimalism about truth and metaethics
-
Divine command theory
In Normative Ethics:
-
Consequentialism and contractualism
-
Virtue ethics
-
Kant’s ethics
-
The history of moral philosophy
-
The work of Iris Murdoch
-
Moral particularism
People
The core members of staff who work in this area are:
Dr Lisa Bortolotti is a Reader in the Philosophy department. Her primary research interests are in biomedical ethics and in the philosophy of the cognitive sciences (with a special focus on psychology and psychiatry).
Dr Ian Law is a Senior Lecturer in philosophy currently working on papers in moral theory, moral psychology, the philosophy of medicine and applied ethics.
Dr Yujin Nagasawa (Reader in philosophy) specialises in the philosophy of religion, the philosophy of mind and applied philosophy.
Dr Jussi Suikkanen’s (Lecturer in philosophy) main research interests lie in meta-ethics and ethical theories, working on the nature of moral properties, moral judgments, and truth in ethics.
Dr Mark Walker’s (Lecturer in philosophy) principal research interests are the philosophy of mind, Kant’s moral philosophy and metaphysics.
Professor Heather Widdows works on global ethics, virtue ethics and feminist theory as well as bioethical issues, particularly those of reproductive, research and genetic ethics.
Postgraduate study
For postgraduates interested in studying programmes or modules in this area we offer the following taught MAs:
Our combined research and taught Philosophy MRes programme also includes modules in ethics and those wishing to conduct pure research in the field may register for either of the following programmes:
We have a number of postgraduate researchers interested in ethics at Birmingham, with current theses including:
All of our postgraduate students benefit from the academic strengths of our research clusters and are often co-supervised by members of staff from associated clusters across the College of Arts and Law, so that they have access to different perspectives on their research topic. If you are interested in doing postgraduate research in ethics at Birmingham please feel free to contact the member of staff in the cluster that you think will be best suited to supervising your work here.
Selected publications
-
Lisa Bortolotti and Heather Widdows (2011): “The Right to Know: Insights from the Capability Approach”. Journal of Medical Ethics 37: 673-676.
-
Iain Law (1996): “Improvement and Truth in Quasi-Realism”, Cogito 10: 189-193.
-
Iain Law (2003): “Autonomy, Sanity and Moral Theory”, Res Publica 9: 39-56.
-
Yujin Nagasawa (2007): “Proxy Consent and Counterfactuals”, Bioethics 22: 16-24
-
Jussi Suikkanen (2010): “Non-Natualism: The Jackson Challenge”. Oxford Studies in Metaethics 5: 87-110.
-
Jussi Suikkanen (2009): “The Subjectivist Consequences of Expressivism”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90: 364-387.
-
Mark Walker (2011): Kant, Schopenhauer, and Morality: Recovering the Categorical Imperative. London: Palgrave.
-
Heather Widdows (2011): Global Ethics: An Introduction. Chesham: Acumen.
-
Heather Widdows (2007) “Is Global Ethics Moral Neo-Colonialism? An Investigation of the Issue in the Context of Bioethics”, Bioethics 21: 305-315.