Overview and details of the sessions of this conference. Please select a date or location to show only sessions at that day or location. Please select a single session for detailed view (with abstracts and downloads if available).
Engineers reshape the world through their design and operational decisions. Engineering ethics education, crucial in an era of rapid technological transformation, addresses the increasing societal demands for responsible innovation. As artificial intelligence and environmental challenges significantly impact our world, the responsibility of engineers extends beyond technology creation to ensure its benefit to public good and sustainability. In our attempts to respond to these demands in our technical university (TU Delft, TU Eindhoven), we observe one major challenge:
Engineering ethics education, even when done in connection to concrete cases and problems, tends to focus on: a) problem-solving approaches, rather than broader problem-making and sense-making content; and b) methods based on abstract reasoning as opposed to embodied experience of the students. Our claim is that current approaches are insufficient to develop moral and political sensitivity and motivation to act.
Aim
Our aim with this interactive experimental session is to introduce and discuss novel approaches currently being developed and implemented at Delft University of Technology and TU Eindhoven to address this challenge, as well as discussing an overview of the current state of Engineering Ethics Education from experiences beyond the Dutch context (Aalborg University, UCL).
Approach
We briefly introduce the challenges identified, but use most of the session to present and discuss our approaches to tackling them. Rather than only showcasing existing, tried and true activities, we hope to enlist participants to help us refine and improve our works-in-progress, as well as thinking about how to sustain and finance these teaching methods in the future.
Content of the workshop:
Introduction
Teaching Philosophy through the Embodied Experience: Space and Power in the Classroom- Aarón Moreno Inglés - TU Delft
Performative arts in engineering ethics teaching – Filippo Santoni de Sio (TU/E)
Panel discussion with audience - Jordi Viader Guerrero (TU Delft)
Engineering as an act of Care: Teaching Responsible Innovation through Empathy - Vivek Ramachandran, University College London
Presentations of the Symposium
Teaching Philosophy through the Embodied Experience: Space and Power in the Classroom
Aarón Moreno Inglés TU Delft
When analysing power, French philosopher Michael Foucault proposed that this is not a fixed entity, possessed by a “powerful” person. Rather, power runs through all strata of society and expresses itself in acts, through unequal power relations (Foucault, Discipline and Punishment, 1975). Although this is a rather well-known framework in the social sciences and the humanities, engineering and other STEM students do not often get the chance to study the topic of power in depth. This activity provides an experimental answer to two questions: 1) How can we best introduce the topic of power to engineering students?; and 2) How can we use artistic methodologies to foster philosophical reflection?
The objective of this participatory presentation is to have a general introduction to the concept of power to engineering students, and study some ways in which it can be defined and embodied. Through the use of narration and performance, participants will inquire about the relation between power and space, using the classroom as a ''dispositif'' through which power flows. They will be asked to use the elements of the classroom to recreate scenes of surveillance and control in different spaces, as well as to represent examples of power relations (and ways of mitigating and resisting these) in their respective fields of work.
Engineering as an act of Care: Teaching Responsible Innovation through Empathy
Vivek Ramachandran University College London
Engineering education faces mounting pressure to prepare students to understand and address their roles in facing complex social and environmental challenges. While frameworks such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) are being adopted by universities, there are significant gaps in embedding these principles into engineering curricula. Care ethics — emphasizing empathy, relationships, and responsiveness — offers a pathway to seamlessly weave climate justice and ethics into engineering education.
This presentation examines how care ethics can guide the integration of Responsible Innovation (RI) within engineering programs. RI encompasses key dimensions such as sustainability, ethics, safety, and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Using project-based learning initiatives at University College London as a case study, I analyse barriers to RI integration, including faculty epistemologies, limited departmental resources, student resistance, and time constraints. To address these challenges, I propose a tailored support framework designed to empower faculty in embedding RI principles into their teaching, fostering sustainability and real-world contextualization, underpinned by a pedagogy of empathy.
Positioning engineering education within the framework of care ethics reimagines the discipline as inherently interdisciplinary, bridging education, climate justice, and technical expertise. This session emphasizes the urgent need for higher education institutions to prepare engineers who can critically engage with their responsibilities in creating and addressing societal and environmental challenges. The session will also invite participants to collaborate on refining and co-creating actionable recommendations, highlighting care-driven, context-specific strategies that transcend traditional technical boundaries.
