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Research Area in Public Ethics

The activities related to the area are structured within three main thematic areas: Ethics and emerging technologies; Ethics and profiles of legal and economic sustainability; Ethics and challenges for the global age

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The contemporary world is crossed by multiple manifestations and challenges that indicate a clear need for ethical, propaedeutic and parallel framing of political and policy discussions and decisions, which must be able to support and, if necessary, counteract such manifestations and challenges. At the same time, contemporary age continues to develop a capacity for innovation in all fields, technological, industrial, services, training and resource management, with unparalleled amplitude and potential for social impact. The idea of establishing the Research Area in Public Ethics within the Dirpolis Institute originates from the possibility of connecting such different vectors and trends.

Overall, activities in this Area are structured within the following three main thematic domains and their related areas:


Ethics and emerging technologies

  • Ethical-social impact of technologies directly related to people (biomedical, bioinformatics, biorobotics, biomechatronics)
  • Post-humanism and ethical-social evaluation of the relative challenges
  • Technological divide and equity challenges
  • Transformations of the social imaginary in the technological age

Ethics and profiles of legal and economic sustainability

  • Sustainability as justice: justice and intergenerational equity
  • Sustainability as anticorruption: from the contrast of corruption to the promotion of public ethics in institutional contexts and organizations
  • Ethics and value systems for organizations

Ethics and challenges for the global age

  • Classic and contemporary ethical theories
  • Lexicon of social ethics: identity, otherness, recognition, community, citizenship
  • Ethics of Emergency and ethics of security
  • Ethics and challenges of intercultural coexistence, between politics and rights

These areas are ideal containers for research projects and congruent scientific, didactic and seminar activities, organized internally or at qualified external institutions, with the participation of Italian and international guests.
In presenting itself in this way, the Research Area in Public Ethics intends to fit within the overall mission of the DIRPOLIS Institute, which is characterized by a clear reference to the best education of the public servant, as well as to the attention for a public debate aware of the challenges of fairness, sustainability and redistribution, which cannot be delayed at all operational and decision-making levels.