Centre for the Ethics of Perception
What it means to see, record and be seen through a device, and who should have a say in it.
The Centre
- Founded
- 2022
- Director
- Professor Judith Demery
- Based in
- Faculty of Philosophy, Chapter House
- Members
- 6 staff and 9 associates
The Centre was founded in 2022 in the Faculty of Philosophy. It brings philosophers together with lawyers, engineers, teachers and the people who wear, prescribe and make recording devices, to ask questions that ethics has mostly asked about cameras on poles and in hands: what may be recorded, kept and used, and with whose agreement, when the camera is in someone’s glasses or in their eye.
Projects
Whose view is it? Consent, bystanders and the ethics of seeing through a device
2022 to 2025. Funded by the Kiroshi Foundation. The Centre’s founding project, which produced the Bystanders report with the Foundation’s Chiba Centre for Visual Science in December 2025.
Recording in the classroom
Since 2025. Work with teachers and head teachers in Oxenfurt and Novigrad on head-worn cameras and implants in schools, which began with a workshop in March 2025.
Consent by proxy
Since 2026. Dr Clare Kearney’s project on whether one person can agree on another’s behalf to being recorded, from parents and children to wearers and the people their devices see.
People
- Professor Judith DemeryDirector
- Dr Megan ThwaiteResearch Fellow
- Dr Clare KearneySenior Lecturer, Philosophy
- Dr Meera NambiarLecturer, Philosophy
- Dr Beatriz CarvalhoLecturer, Philosophy
- Dr Piotr ZawadzkiAssociate Professor, Faculty of Law (associate)
Publications
- Chiba Centre for Visual Science, with the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxenfurt University (2025). Bystanders: what optical implants see of other people. Report KF-R-2025-06. Published by the Kiroshi Foundation.
- Demery, J. (2024). Looking without seeing: the bystander’s claim. Oxenfurt Philosophical Review, 85, 211–236.
- Zawadzki, P. (2024). Recording by worn and implanted cameras: a survey of thirteen jurisdictions. Centre for the Ethics of Perception Working Paper CEP-WP-2024-02.
- Thwaite, M. (2025). Faces in the buffer: what “not recording” means for a worn device. Centre for the Ethics of Perception Working Paper CEP-WP-2025-01.
- Kearney, C. (2026). Consent by proxy. Oxenfurt Philosophical Review, 87, 1–29.
Seminars
The Centre’s seminar meets on alternate Wednesdays in term at 16:15 in the Upper Room of the Chapter House. It is open to members of the University. Events
Contact
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