Centre for Applied EthicsAbout the centre

The CAE has its origins in the "Aula de Ética Social" which began at the University of Deusto at the beginning of the 1993/94 academic year. Its aim was todevelop the UD’s University Project with regard to the promotion of the values underpinning human dignity. In the 1996/97 academic year, Xabier Etxeberría took over the management of the school and remained in the post until the end of 2010, when José María Guibert took over until 2013.

In its first stage, the Aula de Ética focused on promoting the compulsory presence of a professional ethics subject in all the University’s undergraduate degrees, as well as on the training of academic staff to ensure that this subject was adequately taught.

In the 1995-96 academic year, the Aula de Ética launched a collection of "Cuadernos de Ética" published by the University's own publishing house, with the aim of disseminating and publicising research results.

From the beginning, the Aula joined national and international networks such as UNIJES, AUSJAL, Metanexus, EBEN, FUCE and, through the latter, the European Ethics Network. Partnerships and joint initiatives have been particularly intense with Latin American universities through bilateral collaboration agreements with the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM - Mexico), the Universidad Católica de Temuco, and the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.

In 2008, the University recognised the existence of the ‘Ethics applied to social reality’ team with three main research areas: social and political ethics, organisational ethics, cooperativism, social and solidarity economy. In 2010, the team was recognised by the Basque Government

In December 2009, the Centre for Applied Ethics was created, opening up the possibility for the Centre to design and develop postgraduate programmes.