Professional Ethics at Keele - Keele University
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The Centre for Professional Ethics

(PEAK)

Why Study Ethics at Keele?

Professional Ethics at Keele

About PEAK

Keele’s Centre for Professional Ethics (also known as PEAK – Professional Ethics at Keele) is amongst the largest and most successful providers of postgraduate ethics courses in Europe, with over 200 postgraduate students, eight permanent academic staff, and a portfolio of five distinctive MA / PgDip programmes as well as the UK’s first Professional Doctorate in Medical Ethics

We also teach ethics to approximately 50 undergraduate students on a module entitled Life, Sex and Death: An Introduction to Practical Ethics. For more information please go to the electives page.

PEAK is also the leading provider of training for Research Ethics Committees in the UK and Ireland, carrying out up to forty days of training each year, at Keele and in-house, for members of NHS and university committees.

Our courses are taught by staff who are active researchers and able to supervise research degrees (PhD and MPhil) in most fields of applied and professional ethics. Particular interests include: the ethics of biotechnology; commercial exploitation of the human body; the concept of eugenics; public health ethics; ethics and children; ethics and mental health; ethics and addiction; ethics of intellectual property; ethics of risk; ethics of resource allocation; and research ethics.

We run a programme of public lectures in Healthcare Ethics and Law, sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and regularly hold conferences and workshops at Keele, which our students are encouraged to attend. Details of forthcoming events can be found in the panel on the right of this page.

Administratively PEAK is part of the School of Law The PEAK Research Group is part of the Centre for Law Ethics and Society within the Research Institute for Law, Politics, and Justice.

 

For further information about any of our activities please expolre this site or contact us

Leaflets for specific courses may be downloaded from the Postgraduate Courses section of the site.

Read what people have said about our courses:

  • The tutors were excellent and the cases used were very relevant, the tutors made the sessions interesting and held our attention well.  Feedback from a student on Medical Ethic and Law (2010)
  • I found the taught sessions very useful. The lecturers are well informed in regards to their subject matter and deliver them with enthusiasm. There are good opportunities to engage in discussions and to ask questions. Feedback from a student on Ethics of Social Welfare (2009)
  • The sessions, as always, were very informative and thought provoking, incorporating good debate and interesting thoughts to enhance the teaching. Feedback from a student on the Professional Doctorate in Medical (2009)
  • Very dynamic, knowledgeable and interesting. Presented topics/ cases/ materials very well and kept everyone involved. Incorporated variety of experiences and expertise levels of participants very skilfully. Comment from a delegate attending a recent Research Ethics Training course (2010)
  • All excellent, clearly very knowledgeable, helpful, clear, sociable, and I found the two days very stimulating, interesting and enjoyable. Comment from a delegate attending a recent Research Ethics Training course (2010)

News & Events

  • Jonathan Hughes awarded British Academy grant to run a workshop on ethical policing. The workshop, to be held on 18th-19th November 2010, will bring together key figures from the police establishment along with leading academics in applied ethics and criminology and will provide an opportunity to review current thinking in this area and to establish priorities and develop plans for future collaborative research. For further details see the News & Events page.

  • New Book by Stephen Wilkinson "Choosing Tomorrow's Children: the ethics of selective reproduction, has just been published by Oxford University Press. You can also read an article about how he came to write the book in the March 2010 edition of Clinical Ethics.

  • Angus Dawson elected Vice-President of the IAB. The IAB has been the leading international organisation in the field of bioethics for over twenty years. Angus has been on the Board of Directors for two years, and is the joint co-coordinator of the IAB's International Public Health Ethics Network (InterPHEN).

  • Training for Research Ethics Committees November 2010. We will be running our popular short course on research ethics in November this year. Bookings will open shortly.

  • Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures. The programme for 2010/11 will be available soon.