Tuesday 8 & Wednesday 9 July 2025

Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, UK and Online

#OGHB

We are excited to announce the next Oxford Global Health & Bioethics International Conference will take place on 8 & 9 July 2025.

The conference brings together the global health bioethics community, and provides a platform for sharing research, exchanging ideas and building collaborations. The Call for Abstracts is now open. The deadline for submissions is Wednesday 5 February 2025.

• Submit your abstract via Oxford Abstracts

The conference is organised by the Oxford-Johns Hopkins Global Infectious Disease Ethics Collaborative (GLIDE), in association with the Global Health Bioethics Network and the University of Oxford Pandemic Sciences Institute. 

The conference will take place at the Mathematics Institute, University of Oxford, with selected sessions available online.  The conference will include a welcome drinks reception on Monday 7 July, conference dinner on Tuesday 8 July, plus a programme for students and early career researchers.

If you have any questions relating to the conference, please email us at: conference@ethox.ox.ac.uk

Download a pdf copy of this Call for Abstracts.

call for abstracts

The 2025 conference will focus on critical ethical issues in global health policy, practice and research that are most in need of sustained and substantial attention from researchers, funders and policy makers.

The call for abstracts is purposefully broad to enable an inclusive agenda informed by the diverse contexts and priorities of people working in the global health field. Topics addressed by the conference in previous years include ethics and infectious disease, climate change, conflict, decolonisation, emerging technologies, AI, sustainability, gender, migration, polarisation and vulnerability. We are especially keen to highlight ethical issues and perspectives that are under-represented in current global health debates.

Conference abstracts are invited for:

1. Lightning Talks (Topical Discussions)

• A short (5 minutes) presentation with the primary purpose to stimulate discussion on current and emerging issue in global health bioethics.
• Lightning Talks will be grouped into themed sessions. In each session, up to five presentations will be combined together with speakers delivering sequential talks. 
• The collection of brief talks will be followed by a moderated discussion on the overall topic. 

Abstracts are invited for either:

• Individual lightning talks - to be grouped into themes by the conference committee, or
• Group lightning sessions that propose a specific topic, 4 or 5 identified “lightning” speakers, plus a moderator. Group lightning sessions will have 75 minutes available.

2. Oral Paper Presentations

• Speakers will have 25 minutes available, to include a 15-minute presentation and 10 minutes for questions.

3. Poster Presentations

• All posters will be entered into the Poster Competition, the winner of which will receive a £100 voucher prize.

4. Workshops

• Workshops should address significant contemporary challenges in global health bioethics and have relevance across the bioethics community.
• They should be designed towards advancing a product or output, through engagement of conference attendees.
• Workshops will have 75 minutes available and should include representation from a range of institutions and/or countries.

Authors of accepted oral paper presentations and lighting talks will be invited to write up their presentation as a submission to the GLIDE Wellcome Open Research Gateway and to enter the conference best paper competition with a £500 prize.

How to submit an abstract:

• Please submit your abstract via our the Oxford Abstracts online portal – a maximum of 250 words is available for your abstract, not including the title and author details/affiliations.
• Your submission will need to include details for all authors and you will be asked to specify your preferred presentation format.

Further details for abstracts for Group Lightning Sessions and Workshops

• Please also submit an additional Expression of Interest (EOI) of no more than 500 words, providing more detail, by email to: conference@ethox.ox.ac.uk
• For Group Lightning Sessions this should include: the topic or question area your session will discuss, how/why it is a current or emerging topic of importance, and a full list of proposed speakers.
• For Workshops this should include: the workshop question/topic, the output your workshop is working towards, how engaging with conference delegates will advance your project, the workshop format, and any additional speakers you plan to involve.
• Please include the Abstract Number and Title as corresponds to your submission on Oxford Abstracts in the EOI.

You are welcome to submit more than one abstract but, should multiple abstracts with the same presenter be successful, we will ask you to select your preference.

We are aiming to create a lively agenda with opportunities for discussion across and between sessions. Accepted abstracts/authors may, therefore, be invited to be part of the conference agenda in an alternative session than they originally submitted for.

Assessment:

Abstracts will be assessed on the following criteria:

• Originality (for example topic, perspective, region)
• Methodological quality (in relation to the project being described)
• Clarity (the abstract should be clear on the purpose, methods, argument and/or results)
• Relevance to the broad theme of the conference – global health and bioethics 

T