IDEA: The Ethics Centre turns 20
2025 marks 20 years of IDEA The Ethics Centre
Since its launch in September 2005 IDEA colleagues have taught applied ethics to thousands of students across many disciplines, equipping them with the skills to identify, analyse and respond effectively to ethical issues. IDEA has engaged in ground breaking applied research and consultancy of significant value to finance and banking, law, media and engineering, and the Centre’s academic research is influencing many areas of personal, public and professional life including love, sex and relationships, values and character, sustainability and climate change, business and leadership, journalism, artificial intelligence and robotics, medicine, health and engineering.
Join us to celebrate: A year of events
In January IDEA The Ethics Centre held a workshop on human-AI relationships, organised and hosted by Ruby Hornsby. The workshop welcomed talks from expert philosophers who research Human-AI relationships: Dr. Paula Sweeney, Prof. Jörg Löschke, Dr. Rebecca Wallbank, Prof. Micah Lott, Prof. William Hasselberger and Ruby Hornsby. Their talks addressed a broad range of questions including ‘Are Human-AI relationships legitimate and valuable?’ ‘What moral duties do we have towards AI-Systems?’ ‘Should we embrace AI Avatars in Online Dating?. On the second day, there was a round-table involving all participants at the workshop which instigated an insightful cross-disciplinary group discussion on the ethics of death technology and deathbots, and practical suggestions on how to better regulate social-AI systems that are designed to impact human relationships.
“Thank you to everyone who spoke, chaired, attended, and helped to organise this event. You all helped to foster a collaborative and positive environment that provided many new and exciting insights. I look forward to keeping in touch. Thank you also to The IDEA centre for hosting the event, The Centre for Love Sex and Relationships for supporting it, and The Society for Applied Philosophy for generously funding it.” – Ruby Hornsby
Paula Sweeney presenting at the Human-AI Workshop
Rebecca Wallbank presenting at the Human-AI workshop
Another Event held in January was the annual colloquium on healthcare ethics, this year marked the 34th year of the event and once again it was hosted at Craiglands Hotel in Ilkley by Professor Chris Megone.
In February we welcomed you to join us for an evening on Medical Ethics.
In March we hosted a workshop on the Ethics of Art/Aesthetics.
May, June and September are our busiest months….
May brings workshops on Stability and Trust in Journalism, The Political Dimensions of Trust and Trustworthiness and the Future of Intimacy.
We are also proud to host the 2025 Mangoletsi-Potts lecture series. We are delighted to welcome Professor Kristie Dotson of the University of Michigan. Kristie specializes in epistemology, metaphilosophy, and feminist philosophy (particularly, women of color and Black feminisms).
June brings two high profile public lectures. We are delighted to welcome Gavin Esler, author, writer and broadcaster to discuss truth, lies and public discourse. His talk “Dead Cats, Strategic Lying & Truth Decay”, will take place on Tuesday 17th June in Cloth Work Hall, Leeds City Centre.
On Monday 30th June, Heather Widdows, Professor of Philosophy at University of Warwick will discuss the Value of Applied Ethics and the Contribution of IDEA.
In July we host an online workshop on The Ethics of Body Disposal.
And in September (8th-10th), our biggest event yet, our international conference on The Future of Applied Ethics.
Check out our Anniversary Events Calendar to find out more and get involved!