The future of ethics in care: Some reflections.

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I write this at the end of a wonderful week of activities relating to ethics in care–related activities. I gave my inaugural lecture as professor of ethics and care, chaired the international Editorial Board meeting of Nursing Ethics and participated in a workshop to discuss international research collaboration. I am pleased to report that our journal is in good health with a rise in impact factor to 1.24 and 148,465 downloads last year. That week we also hosted the first International Care Ethics (ICE) Observatory conference at the University of Surrey and the 16th nursing ethics conference. We had 145 participants from 26 countries and had much to reflect on regarding the meaning and scope of ethics in care and nursing and next steps for our field. We were delighted to welcome our keynote speaker, Joan Tronto, who gave us a very engaging lecture on the theme of ‘care ethics and relational thinking’. Readers may know that the beginning of what has come to be known as ‘the ethics of care’ or ‘care ethics’ is generally attributed to Carol Gilligan’s In a Different Voice which was published in 1982. Much recent activity focuses on the work of Joan Tronto and theorists such as Annette Baier, Virginia Held, Eva Feder Kittay and Sara Ruddick. Having the opportunity to foreground ethics of care at our conference was a great pleasure as it offers an interesting philosophical lens on ethics in care. We were also pleased to host the launch of the Care Ethical Research Consortium and wish Carlo Leget and Joan Tronto well with this initiative. We will also look forward to future dialogue between the Consortium and the ICE Observatory. The mission statement of the ICE Observatory is ‘to revalue care: facilitating an understanding of care as a complex and dignifying process and as an opportunity to contribute to the flourishing of care-recipients, families and care-givers’. Our mission involves openness to, and engagement with, a range of philosophical perspectives on ethics as applied to care, with a range of disciplinary perspectives (moral philosophy, theology, law, social sciences, politics etc), with different professional perspectives from health and social care and with perspectives from different cultural contexts. Similarly, our journal Nursing Ethics welcomes contributions from scholars and researchers in different disciplines and professions and from different countries and philosophical perspectives committed to throwing light on ethics in care and in contributing to improvements in care practices internationally. No one philosophical perspective is prioritized, no one research paradigm favoured and no region of the world considered to offer more valuable perspectives than any other. At our conference in July, we had the luxury of time and space to engage with a range of approaches to ethics in care including principlism, care ethics, utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, narrative ethics, Buddhist ethics, Christian ethics and casuistry. There are also many interesting perspectives from early professional ethics. Nursing ethics historian Marsha Fowler, who attended our conference last week, reminded me that writing on nursing ethics goes back to the 1800s. Engaging with past scholarship and considering the extensive range of rich perspectives on care/caring and ethics enables us to learn about the evolution of our field. It enables us to learn about the