Vulnerability is a key concept in bioethics, especially in research and public health ethics—but it's often treated too simplistically with traditional approaches limiting their focus to identifying vulnerable subpopulations rather than considering how vulnerability actually functions.

In this presentation, Dr Florencia Luna, propose a more nuanced, layered account. She will introduce two key ideas: (1) vulnerability as a disposition triggered by external conditions, and (2) layered vulnerabilities that can interact and cascade.

This re-conceptualisation offers a more precise and flexible ethical tool which has already begun shaping ethical guidelines.She argues that such a refining of our understanding of vulnerability really matters for ethical analysis and practice.

About our Speaker

Florencia Luna, M.A, PhD. Superior Researcher at CONICET (National Scientific and Technological Research Council), Argentina. Director of the Program of bioethics at FLACSO (Latin American University of Social Sciences) President of the International Association of Bioethics (IAB) (2003-2005). She was on the Steering Committee of the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) working on the International Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical Research Involving Human Subjects (2002).

She has won the Guggenheim Foundation Fellow (2006) and has been awarded the Konnex Prize: Honor Diploma in Ethics in 2006. External Member of the Scientific Committee of Brocher Foundation 2014-(Switzerland). National Contact Point (NCP) in Social Science and Humanities (SSH) of Argentina for the European Commission (FP7) (2009-2011). She has published more than 90 articles in peered reviewed national and international journals and is the author of several books, including Bioethics and Vulnerability: A Latin American View (RODOPY, Amsterdam, 2006).