The Ethox Centre aims to improve ethical standards in healthcare practice and in medical research. It does this through education, research, and the

provision of ethics support to health professionals and medical researchers. The Centre aims in all its activities to be close to practice and seeks to engage

with ethical issues faced by real world actors in real world settings. One implication of this is that the Centre places particular value on approaches bringing

together empirical research with rigorous ethical analysis.

The Centre’s research activities focus on three areas:

• global health ethics
• clinical ethics
• research ethics

The Centre’s focus on the improvement of ethical standards in healthcare practice and medical research means that it places a great deal of importance on

the provision of ethics support for health professionals and researchers, the development of policy and of models of good practice, and the provision of

ethics training and education. These activities rarely if ever take anything approximating a linear form running from ‘problem’ through research to ‘solution’.

There are many possible routes such journeys can and do take. Furthermore, while taking the view that there is particular value in bringing together

empirical research with ethical analysis, Ethox does not seek to have an agreed position on the form such research should take. Indeed, the

methodological and theoretical implications of engaging seriously with the relationships between empirical research and ethical analysis are a productive

source of debate within the Centre.

The Ethox Centre has a rich research culture including visiting researchers, research seminars and on-going collaborative writing groups on a wide range of

topics.