The Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics Summer School, is at Merton College, Oxford, 4th to 7th August, 2025. The topic of this year’s Summer School is “The Ethics of Captivity”.
As in previous years, the Summer School will have an impressive line-up of speakers from across the globe, covering multiple disciplines. Speakers from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia will address the Summer School’s topic from the perspectives of ethics, law, history, economics, religion, ecology, and more.
The speakers will present and discuss the plight of some of the billions of animals that are kept captive worldwide every year, with confinements including agriculture, fur farming, experimentation, aquaculture, fashion, breeding, and trade, as well as menageries, zoos, canned hunts, circuses, aquariums and even our own homes.
The purpose is to address fundamental questions including: How many, if any, of these practices can be morally justified? Why should humans want to keep animals captive on such a vast scale? What harm is done to animals by denying them their basic desire to be free? What can be done legally, culturally, and politically to help humans move beyond this worldwide practice?
With two programmes running concurrently in different areas of the College, delegates can start the official programme hearing about either “Evaluating the economic justifications for confinement in animal agriculture” or “The ethical imperative for a pre-emptive ban on octopus farming”. The full programme ends on the subjects of “Taking sentience seriously: Zoos and domestic animals” and “How captive animals are vulnerable to zoonotic disease”. This is just a tiny glimpse into the huge breadth of subject matter that will be covered over the intervening days.
A significant highlight at this year’s Summer School is Tuesday evening’s panel discussion of experts on aquaculture as the next moral frontier, chaired by Max Elder, Managing Director of Food Systems Innovations.
Director of the Oxford Annual Animal Ethics Summer School, Dr Clair Linzey, said: “When you talk about captivity, people tend to think of zoos, safari parks or circuses. But captivity applies to such a broad spectrum of scenarios, many of which people may not even pause to question, such as farms, aquariums, sanctuaries, and even animals kept as companions. It is time to broaden the conversation around captivity and that is what we will be doing this August.”
The Summer School is always a sociable affair too, with plenty of opportunity for delegates to get to know one another and discuss lectures and workshops, at meals, and socials each evening, not to mention a champagne reception and a Gala Dinner on the penultimate evening.
All this, with the historic and beautiful buildings and gardens of Oxford University’s Merton College as the backdrop.
