Ethics, Values and Policy Initiative

An initiative interested in ethics and values based policy-making, located in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University.

Team
A group of students walking

Putting ethics and values at the heart of policy-making.

About EVPI

The question of ethics and values is crucial to policymaking, particularly in our increasingly connected, globalised and complex world. However, policymaking is often rooted in an evidence-based approach that can exclude issues of ethics and values. We must connect the evidence to ethics and values to confront the fundamental issues facing wider society. To help do this, the PPR Department has created the new Ethics, Values and Policy Initiative. This initiative brings together academic experts and policy actors to explore developing an ethics and values-based framework for evidence-based policy making.

The EVPInitiative will showcase high profile speakers giving public lectures, policymaker forums, engagement with local, regional, and international policy actors and other activities.

Research Themes:

  • The Health theme covers values, ethical, legal and social issues that emerge in public health, biomedical research such as technological advances fundamentally change the possibilities for human reproduction, physical and mental health.

  • The Security theme covers a wide range of topics that examine the ethics and values of complex security challenges that affect people and societies, ranging from seapower and maritime security, AI-based and cyber security, migration laws, the blue economy as well as the changing nature of war, international politics, peace and diplomacy.
  • Equity and Justice covers a wide range of topics that uses a critical lens to examine the (re)production of social inequalities. Research in this theme explicitly focus on race and ethnicity, gender, political economy, policy studies and social movements.

  • The Faith and Heritage theme covers the study of religions and what this means for policy and politics. In particular, it highlights how histories, traditions and memories inspires, informs and influence and inspires public debate and policy both directly and indirectly. Topics include classical Sanskrit and some Middle Indic (Prakrit) sources, Christianity and Islamic studies.

The EVPI logo

More about the EVPI

EVPI Featured Research

These are some of the publications from our board members on their past and current research relating to ethics, values, and policy-making.

Publications

Linked Projects

Join EVPI

Get in touch if you would like to join our network, partner with us, or suggest a research collaboration.

EVPI email address

EVPI Events

Sorry, we looked but there are no events currently scheduled in this area.

More Events

Linked Organisations

EVPI News

Doctor in white coat with hands out - suspended above the hands are a pair of old-style brass weighing scale pans

Call for new governance framework for stem cell-based embryo models

A Nuffield Council on Bioethics working group, including Lancaster University Distinguished Professor of Bioethics Stephen Wilkinson, calls for a new governance framework for stem cell-based embryo models, one that that encourages innovation whilst upholding ethical standards and ensuring public benefit. 
The Spanish Ambassador, Mr José Pascual Marco Martínez (left), with the Dean of Lancaster University’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Professor Edward Simpson (right), and The School of Global Affairs Head of Department, Dr Derek Hird (centre left), and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Director of Internationalisation Professor Christopher Macleod.

University provides warm welcome for UK’s Spanish Ambassador

The UK’s Spanish Ambassador was on campus at Lancaster University this week to further engagement across education and research with Spain.
Hand gripping megaphone wrapped in barbed wire

Study exposes global ‘blind spot’ in human rights protections for dissidents

Intensifying coercive tactics used by repressive states to silence critics abroad requires the set-up of specialist transnational rights protection offices, says a new paper by researchers at Lancaster University and Central European University in Vienna.

Spanish flag in red and yellow

Lancaster University to welcome UK’s Spanish Ambassador

The UK’s Spanish Ambassador will visit Lancaster University this month to further engagement across education and research with Spain.
United Kingdom’s Carrier Strike Group, led by HMS Queen Elizabeth, during its deployment to the Asia-Pacific in 2001 Image shows nine ships sailing on the sea

Public forum will examine approach to future relations with China

Relationships between the UK, EU, US and China will be up for discussion at a public forum in Lancaster later this month.
Imag shows the executive report editors Dr AmyAtkinson (left) and Professor Uta Papen

Urgent action needed to ensure children with SEND receive support they need

The system that is supposed to support children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) is ‘broken’, says a new Child of the North report edited by Lancaster University researchers.

More News

Contact EVPI

Email evpi@lancaster.ac.uk to find out more about our work.