Christian Ethics Graduate Research Seminar
Christian Ethics Research Seminar
Trinity Term 2025
All seminars will be held 3-4.30pm and take place at the South West Canonry, Christ Church unless otherwise notified. It is expected that all Christian Ethics graduate students who are resident in Oxford will attend the seminars unless there is a good reason to be absent, in which case apologies should, please, be sent a week in advance.
Thursday May 8thth (2nd week)
Prof Esther Reed
‘The Pedagogue Leading up to Christ’:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Educative Purpose of Human Law
Prof Esther Reed teaches moral philosophy, Christian ethics, and political theology at Exeter University. She is a former President of the UK Society for the Study of Christian Ethic. Her research focuses on the intersection of theology, ethics, and public affairs, with a particular emphasis on just war theory, military ethics, international relations, and human rights. Her books include The Ethics of Human Rights: Contested Doctrinal Problems (2007); Theology for International Law (2013); and The Limit of Responsibility: Engaging Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a Globalizing Era (2018). Her public engagements include working with the Royal Navy, being part of a commission addressing the ethical and religious dimensions of mining, and producing resources for reading the bible in religious education.
Thursday May 22nd (4th week)
Dr Margaret Adam
Peaceful Death? A Christian Pacifist Imagination and Euthanasia
Dr Margaret Adam is Visiting Tutor of Moral Theology at St Stephen’s House. She has taught theology and ethics at the Scottish Episcopal Institute, Sarum College, St Mellitus College, the University of Glasgow, the University of Chester, and Loyola University Maryland. She was the postdoctoral researcher for the recent AHRC-funded Christian Ethics of Farmed Animal Welfare project. She has published Our Only Hope: More Than We Can Ask or Imagine (2013) and articles on eschatological hope, farmed animal welfare, human consumption, and pandemic ethics, in edited volumes and in journals including Pro Ecclesia, Concillium, The Sewanee Theological Review, and Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion.
Thursday June 5th (6th week)
NB different time & location
Prof Paul Gilroy
‘Towards a Reparative Humanism’
Public Lecture as part of the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life
Christian Humanism in the Black Atlantic Conference (5th – 7th June)
Location: Pusey House
Time: 5.30-7.15 (with drinks reception afterwards)
Paul Gilroy is Emeritus Professor of Humanities at University College London and a founding director of the Sarah Parker Remond Centre for the study of racism and racialisation. Gilroy was previously Professor of American and English Literature at King's College London, Giddens Professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics and Political Science (2005-2012), Charlotte Marian Saden Professor of African American Studies and Sociology at Yale (1999-2005) and Professor of Cultural Studies and Sociology at Goldsmiths College London (1995-1999). He holds honorary doctorates from Goldsmiths College, Sussex University, the University of Liege, the University of Copenhagen, Oxford and St. Andrews. He is an honorary Fellow of Sussex University and of King’s College, London. In 2014, he was made a Fellow of the British Academy and in 2018 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded Norway’s Holberg Prize in 2019. He writes widely on Art, Music, Literature and Politics.
Friday June 20th (8th week)
Summer Party
Weather permitting a drinks party will be held for seminar participants in the gardens of the South West Canonry at Christ Church. An invitation will be sent out nearer the time to determine numbers wishing to attend.
