Institute for Ethics & Society
Welcome to the Institute for Ethics and Society. Our researchers grapple with big questions: How do we best achieve human flourishing? What makes a good society? How can we live, and die, well? Based on the Sydney Campus, we’re a cross-disciplinary team of moral philosophers, bioethicists, and social scientists doing both pure and applied research.
Our transformative research aims to improve contemporary social, political, and individual life by exploring: how the virtues can strengthen civil society and support human flourishing; life, death, and the care we receive; and the role of religion and spirituality in political and personal life. We partner with a wide range of industry and community groups – from schools and hospitals to grassroots political and religious organisations. Informed by the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, the IES pursues excellence in research, public engagement, and ethics education.
The IES has three Research Focus Areas:
Highlights
2026 Visiting Professor: Meghan Sullivan (University of Notre Dame, USA) In March 2026, the Institute will host two events by Professor Meghan Sullivan exploring urgent themes: a public lecture on AI and human flourishing and a masterclass on love for the stranger in moral life. Sullivan is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. Deeply interested in philosophy's contributions to visions of the good life, Professor Sullivan is Director of the University-wide Ethics Initiative and founding director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. Drawing from her enormously popular undergraduate course 'God and the Good Life,' she is the co-author of The Good Life Method (Penguin, 2022) with Paul Blashko. Professor Sullivan will be hosted by IES Research Fellows Dr Victoria Lorrimar, who attended the landmark Notre Dame US Summit on AI, Faith, and Human Flourishing in late 2025, and Dr Tim Smartt . Public Lecture: AI and the Good Life Monday 9 March 2026, 6pm, St Benedict's Hall Despite substantial contribution to ethical discourse, faith communities have largely been sidelined in digital-era ethical debates. But with rapid and striking developments in agentic AI, it is clear that the ethical imagination must be expanded. Based on interviews with over 100 faith leaders, Professor Sullivan will offer five concepts from Christian ethics to the new questions posed by powerful emerging technologies. Masterclass: The Good Samaritan and Love for the Stranger Monday 9 & Wednesday 11 March 2026, 10:00am–12:30pm Moorgate Room, 10 Grafton St, Chippendale Professor Sullivan will discuss chapters from her forthcoming Oxford University Press monograph on a new approach to love’s role in ethics. According to the love ethic, personal dignity is the ground of moral significance and interpersonal love is the foundation of ethical reasoning. |
IES Research Fellow Dr Adam Piovarchy awarded an ARC DECRA Blame is everywhere in contemporary life, yet we still lack a clear account of what blame is for, how it works, and when it helps (or harms) moral and social norms. Dr Adam Piovarchy’s ARC DECRA project The Blame Game: Culpability, Co-Operation and Cultural Change investigates blame as a mechanism for norm‑maintenance and how it can signal shared expectations, sanction wrongdoing, and shape moral behaviour. Valued at almost $500,000 over three years, the project will use findings from game theory and psychology to develop a new theory of what blame is, what it is for, and how it can be used for both good and bad. It will help us better understand the moral and emotional aspect of blame: how it can be used and abused and when it should be fostered or forsworn. ARC DECRAs are awarded to outstanding early-career researchers whose research is of an exceptional standard, with potential for significant new knowledge. Notre Dame researchers won three DECRAs in the 2026 round, with a stunning success rate of 60% (national average 13.1%). In addition to Dr Piovarchy’s DECRA, the IES hosts two other ARC-funded projects: Professor David Bronstein’s Future Fellowship on Aristotle’s theory of virtue and Associate Professor Nathan Lyons’ DECRA on nature and culture in Medieval philosophy and theology. Dr Piovarchy is a Research Fellow in the Moral Philosophy and the Good Life research focus area in the IES. |
Humboldt Fellowship: Dr Rosemary Hancock to take up research fellowship at Leipzig University IES Senior Research Fellow Dr Rosemary Hancock has been awarded a prestigious Humboldt Research Fellowship, which will support her to travel to the University of Leipzig from April 2026 to March 2027, hosted by leading scholar of urban religion and cultural sociology Professor Marian Burchardt. In Leipzig Dr Hancock will develop her second book manuscript, drawing on an ethnography of community gardens and bush regeneration groups in urban Sydney. She will draw on research conducted in 2024–25 and funded by a UNDA research development grant. The book will explore urban nature practices of religiously diverse citizens in four community gardening groups in inner Sydney, asking how notions of the social – particularly relating to religion, spirituality, and meaning making – are changing in the Anthropocene. Dr Hancock convenes the Religion, Culture and Society research focus area in the IES and its monthly religion and politics reading group. |
AI at IES, with A/Prof Victoria Lorrimar IES Senior Research Fellow Dr Victoria Lorrimar is helping shape Notre Dame’s global conversation on AI and education. In October 2025, she represented UNDA at an important panel held in the 16th‑century Biblioteca Vallicelliana, during the Jubilee of the World of Education – a collaboration with the Australian Embassy to the Holy See. The event brought together international scholars to ask how universities can promote deep learning, critical thinking, and moral discernment in a time of instantaneous information. Dr Lorrimar drew on the work of St John Henry Newman, arguing that the need to ‘cultivate the intellect’ has never been more critical than in the age of artificial intelligence. Having hosted the conference AI and the Quest for Wisdom in May 2025, IES is rapidly becoming a leading national centre for humanities research on artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies, exploring the profound social, philosophical, and pedagogical implications of these fast-paced developments. |
New Research Seminar in Ethics & Epistemology The IES is hosting a new research seminar in 2026, titled the Notre Dame Ethics and Epistemology Talks. Hosted by the Moral Philosophy and the Good Life research focus area, the seminar will provide a venue for workshopping new research that explores the role belief plays in living well. How do our beliefs shape the quality of our lives? How should we respond to those with whom we disagree? When (if ever) is it appropriate to hold people accountable for reckless or harmful beliefs, as we do for reckless actions? |
What our partners are saying
“We partnered with the IES on a highly specific and innovative ethics education program in the hope that they would be able to help us measure its effectiveness in a meaningful way and give us concrete suggestions for improvement. They delivered on all of this and more by tailoring their expertise to suit our needs and ultimately delivering a high quality report, which has been an enormous help to the leadership of St Vincent’s as part of our broader ethics strategy. The staff at the IES have a high level of professionalism and mix this with a focus on adaptability and contextual sensitivity, which make them the perfect partners for work in professional ethics.”
Dr Dan Fleming
Visiting Fellow | Faculty of Law | The University of Technology, Sydney
Associate Member | Law, Health and Justice Research Centre | The University of Technology, Sydney
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