Practical Ethics (Taught)

The information provided on this page was correct at the time of publication (November 2025). For complete and up-to-date information about this course, please visit the relevant University of Oxford course page via www.graduate.ox.ac.uk/ucas.

The MSt in Practical Ethics offers high quality training in practical ethics through flexible, part-time learning.

This course is run jointly by the Uehiro Oxford Institute and the Department for Continuing Education, and draws on the internationally recognised research and expertise of the Uehiro Oxford Institute and the Ethox Centre.

The course is highly interdisciplinary in character but the primary focus is ethical and philosophical. Students will learn how to apply rigorous philosophical analysis to real-life ethical problems and will be provided with a grounding in key ethical concepts and methods, as well as in major debates in practical ethics. Students will also have the opportunity for in-depth research on a topic of their choice.

The course is relevant to students from a wide range of professional backgrounds, including philosophy and bioethics, medicine and health, the technology sector, and the legal and public policy sectors.

The University of Oxford was ranked as the top university for the study of ethics by the Centre for World University Rankings in 2017, and has consistently ranked as the top university in applied ethics by the Philosophical Gourmet Report, including its most recent report (2024-25).

Course structure
In this course, students undertake six taught modules and a dissertation. There is one compulsory module and a choice of five out of eight option modules.

Each module will be taught over an intensive residential teaching week (~25 contact hours) in Oxford to include lectures, seminars, and discussion groups. Modules are normally provided in clusters, offering students options around the number of visits to Oxford each year. Online materials are available including essential readings, alongside forums where students can communicate and continue discussion when away from Oxford.

It is expected that students undertake significant independent study in order to complete the assessments to the appropriate level. This will vary from student to student and over the period of the course according to the modules taken, but is expected to be around 16 hours of independent study per week for periods equivalent to the length of term (three sets of eight weeks) throughout the year, although the course will not stick rigidly to the term structure.