Courses with reduced fee for PE&RC PhDs

As a future scientist in the life sciences, it is important that PhD students have an insight into the debates around the relationship between human beings, animals, and nature, to understand their meaning and to learn to participate in these debates. This course will provide students with a systematic overview of the key topics of animal and environmental ethics. Specific attention is given to the ethical assessment of animal experiments and the tension between individualist animal ethics and collectivist environmental ethics. Attention is also given to the cultural background of normativity and the ethical aspects of the PhD students’ own research projects.

The aim of the course is to introduce students to the broad ranges of approaches to the practice and policy of biodiversity conservation present in different chair groups across the university. While many of us are centrally concerned to research and support conservation, we do so from quite diverse perspectives, and currently there is very little dialogue or direct cooperation across the different silos.

As a future scientist in the life sciences, it is important that PhD students have an insight into the debates around the relationship between human beings, animals, and nature, to understand their meaning and to learn to participate in these debates. This course will provide students with a systematic overview of the key topics of animal and environmental ethics. Specific attention is given to the ethical assessment of animal experiments and the tension between individualist animal ethics and collectivist environmental ethics. Attention is also given to the cultural background of normativity and the ethical aspects of the PhD students’ own research projects.