Organisation profile

The Ethics, Values and Policy Initiative (EVPI) is an initiative from the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion at Lancaster University led by co-directors, Dr Temidayo Eseonu and Professor Robert Geyer, and members of the EVPI board. The EVPInitiative seeks to foreground the role ethics and values in policy making, whether that is front-line staff making decisions on service delivery or ministers deciding on policy proposals. Bringing together a unique combination of academic experts and a wide range of policy actors, this EVPInitiative explores the tensions and opportunities of developing an ethics- and values-based framework for evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) that takes us beyond its current limits. The limitations of this dominant mode of policy making, EBPM, is its overreliance on scientific, rational, positivist and quantitative approaches to policy making. EBPM tends to ignore, minimize, and reject the importance of ethics, values and politics in policy making.