Maximilian Klinger

I am a DPhil candidate in Political Theory. My thesis, supported by Nuffield College, explores several issues relating to the ethics of trade: (i) Under what conditions is consensual and mutually beneficial trade nevertheless wrongful? (ii)What is the moral force of wrongful trade? (iii) How should consumers, producers, and the government respond to wrongful trade?

Fikayo Akeredolu

I am currently pursuing a DPhil in Politics, focusing on "The Political Economy of Energy Transition in Nigeria." My research interests and areas of expertise include climate change in the Global South and trade, finance, and development within the Sino-African relationship.

I have a Master's in Contemporary Chinese Studies from the University of Oxford and a Master's in Global Affairs from Tsinghua University in China, where I studied as a Schwarzman Scholar.

The Moral Machine Experiment

I describe the Moral Machine, an internet-based serious game exploring the many-dimensional ethical dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles. The game enabled us to gather 40 million decisions from 3 million people in 200 countries/territories. I report the various preferences estimated from this data, and document interpersonal differences in the strength of these preferences. I also report cross-cultural ethical variation and uncover major clusters of countries exhibiting substantial differences along key moral preferences.

The League of Nations, International Law, and the Current Ecological Crisis

The role of international law – and international lawyers – in managing environmental problems is understood to be very new. This lecture reveals its deeper history, showing how international law was mobilized to address environmental challenges in the era of the two world wars. In particular, it uncovers the pivotal role of the League of Nations in determining an emergent environmental agenda in the 1920s and 1930s.

Dimensions of valuation: Contrasting moral expansiveness and moral capacity

Scholars who seek to understand how individuals differ in their scope of moral regard have typically focused on variations in the total number of entities that are ascribed moral standing. However, this focus leaves important questions unanswered about the nature of people's moral capacity. For example, two people may be equally morally expansive but differ substantially in the degree to which they value strangers over animals.

Can Food Make the World Go Round?: Scientific Nutrition, Environmental Thinking and Empire

When discussing the contemporary environmental crisis, it is difficult to overstate the impact our food system has on the planet. We are eating in ways that might cause our own extinction, with monocultures, genetically modified seeds, and food that travels too far, causing an incomparable carbon footprint. Historians have long discussed how empires transformed food into a global commodity through innovations such as steamships, breeding techniques, and trade networks that spanned the globe.

Before languages are endangered: Community, connection, and sacred identities

As communities lose their native language they often also lose cultural traditions that are tied to that language, such as songs, myths, poetry, remedies, and particular ecological and geological knowledge. Furthermore, the social structure of one’s community is often reflected through speech and language behaviour. This seminar will address the correlation between minority languages and dialects, and the deep structure of human identity and community cohesion.
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