Festival of Arguments

Join the Oxford Uehiro Centre and colleagues from across Oxford in exploring how to think critically about life in this public festival of practical ethics. The Festival of Arguments is free to take part in, and focusses on exploring today’s most pressing ethical dilemmas. Join us for walks, talks, debates, competitions, classes and more!

How to get involved

Thank you to everyone who has taken part  in the Festival of Arguments! We hope you enjoyed it. In 2023 we are taking a year off from the Festival, with new events planned to mark both the 20th anniversary of the Centre, and the 5th anniversary of the MSt in Practical Ethics, more info on which will be forthcoming. We hope you can join us for the public events, which we hope to have online as well as in person.

We hope to be back with a Festival of Arguments in 2024, with a new programme. You can keep in touch by joining the Festival's mailing list and following us on Facebook and Twitter. You may also be interested in the Festival spin-out series Thinking Out Loud - a podcast series that began in 2020 as part of the inaugural festival, and our Bitesize ethics summer programme, which we also hope to repeat next year.

If you’re interested in putting on an event as part of the festival next year, or would like to suggest an event please email us.

Join our mailing list!
Thinking Out Loud

The current focus of Thinking Out Loud is on Animals and Pandemics. Covid-19 is very likely a zoonotic disease, which means that it was transmitted from animals  to humans. Other dangerous infectious diseases, such as SARS, MERS, Ebola and HIV originated in animals too. In fact, of all emerging infectious diseases in humans, 75% are zoonotic. Joining Katrien Devolder are philosophers, scientists and other experts to discuss how we might prevent future pandemics. See all our TOL interviews on our YouTube channel playlist.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PLrZLXu5hwoDMgZCqwJc3_NfKvWBcHcd3x
Festival 2022
Festival 2021
Festival 2020