A student exploration of applied ethics in the Netherlands

Students were given an assignment to explore the field of applied ethics in the Netherlands as part of the master’s program in applied ethics at Utrecht University. This assignment had two educational purposes: to see how the students would explore such a new field and the perspectives on ethics and ethical expertise that arose as a result of this exploration, and to determine what applied ethicists think about the methods used in their field. We found that students used diverse methods to explore this field, and the success of those methods depended mainly on their own methodo- logical skills. We also observed that, even though different methods are clearly being used in the various subfields of applied ethics, a simple high-theory approach was not embraced, and there was a great deal of overlap in the type of methodologies that are used in the subfields of applied ethics.