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Group photo of the Amsterdam Winter School 2025

In the week of 20 January 2025, we (a group of 25 students from VU University Amsterdam) participated in the Oxford-Amsterdam Winter School through our Master’s program Philosophy, Bioethics and Health. We are from The Netherlands, Germany and the United States and have backgrounds ranging from medicine to psychology, technical medicine, neuroscience, midwifery, public health and genetics.

During this week in Oxford, we presented on articles written by scholars working at the Ethox Centre and Uehiro Institute, including our own considerations and reflections. Many topics were discussed, such as the ethics of antimicrobial resistance, data sharing, reproductive choices, AI and empathetic healthcare systems. Some papers focused on more philosophical questions, such as what makes a medical intervention ‘invasive’, whereas others were more empirical, researching patient and public perspectives on topics like genomics, or Muslim perspectives on palliative and end of life care. Overall, the variety of presentations exposed this year’s cohort to the many timely and important topics in bioethics today, as well as the various ways to explore and analyze them.

Importantly, not only did we broaden and deepen our knowledge on how bioethics is practiced academically and its variety in topics; we also developed on a personal level. The Winter School gave us the unique opportunity to practice giving presentations and receive feedback in an academic setting, and to engage with scholars from a diverse international and interdisciplinary background. In addition, we learned from and with each other through lively discussions. Finally, we grew together as a group, and were able to build very valuable new connections. This included connecting with three medicine students from the university of Augsburg, Germany, who also joined the program.

Despite our tight schedule, we were also able to admire the beautiful ancient city of Oxford and the rich traditions of the university of Oxford – and of course, we all bought too many books at Blackwells.

We want to express our gratitude to the Ethox Centre for making this unique experience possible for us!  

By Kendra Gordillo, Raili van Kruining, Dörte Winkler and Stella Blank