The Ethical Challenges Lecture 2026, given by Dr Elizabeth Cripps, brings together philosophy and contemporary ethical challenges.

About this event

The Southampton Ethics Centre is delighted to invite you to the Ethical Challenges Lecture 2026. How can philosophy help you make sense of the most pressing ethical questions of our time? This annual lecture series shows you how philosophical thinking can illuminate issues of wide interest, from global justice and climate change to multiculturalism, education, and beyond. This year, you will have the opportunity to hear from Dr Elizabeth Cripps (University of Edinburgh) on the topic of “Living Together in an Ecological Emergency: The Rocky Road to Multispecies Citizenship”. Join us for a thought-provoking and stimulating talk that will give you plenty to think about long after the event ends.

We are grateful to the Royal Institute of Philosophy for supporting this event.

Lecture synopsis:

So you think you know what it means to be a good citizen? Pay your taxes, vote, obey the laws, respect others’ formal rights, educate your children to do the same. Fulfil the implicit social contract which enables the rational members of your state to live well, justly and safely together, despite different religions, ideologies, and plans for life.

That’s the familiar, political liberal model. But how does it hold up in societies built not on mutual advantage but on systematic racialised, gendered disadvantage? When obeying the laws and maintaining just institutions are not the same thing? Can ‘good citizenship’ be limited to state borders when some humans destroy others’ lives, systematically, across states and generations? Critics have pressed these points. And what does ‘citizenship’ mean in a multispecies world: where humans are neither separate nor so special as we think ourselves? Where nonhumans also deserve justice, our flourishing depends fundamentally on our relationships with them, and the grim history of intra-human atrocity is inseparable from the devastation of the natural world?

This paper asks all this. Then it outlines four major obstacles to understanding and enacting multispecies (or ‘ecological’) citizenship: philosophical, socio-psychological, political, and educational.

Event Information

Guests can join this event in person at Avenue Campus, University of Southampton.

We encourage guests to register at your earliest opportunity as spaces are strictly limited.

If you have any questions about this event please contact fahevent@soton.ac.uk.

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