Prof. dr. Marcel Verweij

Hoogleraar
Ethiek Instituut
Filosofie
m.f.verweij@uu.nl

My job as professor of philosophical ethics is not my first at Utrecht University, I studied at this university, and started my career at the Utrecht University Centre for Bioethics and Health Law, which later evolved in the Ethics Institute. For 5 years I worked as clinical ethicist at the Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen; at the same time I wrote my dissertation Preventive Medicine Between Obligation and Aspiration. Given that there was only limited synergy between my work as clinical ethicist and my research in ethics of prevention, I returned to the Utrecht Centre for Bioethics, combining this with  a postdoc position at the Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam. From 2002 to 2013  I had a fulltime position at Utrecht University, first as assistant professor, then as associate professor. In those years I initiated, together with Angus Dawson the International Association of Bioethics network on Public Health Ethics. We also started the journal Public Health Ethics, published by OUP. In Utrecht,  Frans Brom and I started the MA program in Applied Ethics, which soon was granted Erasmus Mundus status, in a collaboration with Linkoping Trondheim, and Stellenbosch.

From 2013 to 2023 I was professor of philosophy at Wageningen University, leading the Philosophy group. This is a vibrant group of philosophers working on animal and environmental ethics, philosophy of technology and public health. In my last year I also lead the 4TU Centre for Ethics and Technology, of which Wageningen is one of the 4 partners.

Throughout my career I have taught ethics for a variety of student audiences: philosophy, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, food sciences; but also professionals (nursing, medicine, public health, occupational health), also in guest positions at the universities of Keele (UK) and Stellenbosch (S-A) and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.