Professor Richard Ashcroft has presented his latest work, “Bioethics as a Utopian Style of Thought” on 19 March 2014, at Strand Campus, King's College London.
In the talk, Professor Ashcroft proposed the idea that bioethics is a style of utopian thought. He argued that there is a novel way of thinking utopia, which is inherent in bioethics. This novel way of thinking utopia emerged through a dialogue with the life sciences and medicine, and plays on tropes of liberty, progress, human perfectibility and at the same time on ideals of reasonableness, consensus and shared morality.
The talk was presented as part of the SSHM Seminar Series hosted by the Department of Social Science Health & Medicine, Kings College London.
Professor Richard Ashcroft teaches medical law and ethics at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in the Department of Law at Queen Mary University of London. He is also one of the Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Incentives in Health, funded by the Wellcome Trust. In 2013 he was appointed Trustee and Governor of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. He has a longstanding interest in biomedical research ethics.