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About the AAPAE

Ethics has had a high profile in Australia over the last decade. There is now a growing recognition of applied and professional ethics as a multidisciplinary field, encompassing a wide variety of disparate areas, investigation of which has an important role to play in public, academic and professional life.

The Australian Association for Professional and Applied Ethics (AAPAE) was established at a conference on Teaching Applied Ethics held in Sydney in 1992. Academics and professionals from many different backgrounds met together, found a great deal of common ground, profited from their interchanges, and were eager to meet again on a regular basis.

The next step was to form an association which could bring together people normally separated by traditional discipline boundaries. Hence the formation in 1993 of the AAPAE, a non-partisan, non-profit national umbrella organisation for all those concerned with applied and professional ethics in its many forms.

The broad purpose of the AAPAE is to encourage awareness of, and foster discussion of issues in, applied and professional ethics. It provides a meeting point for practitioners from various fields and academics with specialist expertise and welcomes everyone who wants or needs to think and talk about applied or professional ethics.

The AAPAE fosters and publishes research in applied and professional ethics as well as attempting to create connections with special interest groups. The AAPAE does not endorse any particular viewpoint, but rather aims to promote a climate in which different and differing views, concerns, and approaches can be expressed and discussed.

The formal aims of the AAPAE, as stated in its constitution, are:

  • To facilitate networking between individuals and institutions working or interested in the area of professional and applied ethics.
  • To foster community discussion of issues related to professional and applied ethics.
  • To encourage a focus on the teaching of professional and applied ethics.
  • To organise conferences, meetings and other events in order to fulfil the above aims.
  • To develop and distribute publications, including a newsletter and conference proceedings.

More information on the AAPAE, including on past annual conferences, is available at: http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/aapae/about_aapae/about_aapae.htm