Concept
Emmanuel Agius (born 1954) is a Maltese minor philosopher mostly specialised and interested in ethics. Agius was born at Mqabba, Malta, in 1954. He studied at the University of Malta from where he acquired a Bachelor’s degree and a Licentiate in Theology (1979). Subsequently, he studied in Belgium at the University of Leuven from where he acquired a Master’s degree in philosophy and a Doctorate degree in Theology (1986). Afterwards, he studied bioethics first as a Research Fellow of Alexander-von-Humboldt Stiftung at the University of Tübingen in Germany, then as a Fulbright Scholar at the National Reference Library of Bioethics at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. (United States), and finally, having been awarded a Theodore M. Hesburgh Scholarship, at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, (also in the U.S.). Agius began teaching moral theology at the University of Malta. Later he taught bioethics, moral philosophy, moral theology, and professional ethics at under-graduate and graduate levels. He was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Theology in 2007. Agius was former member of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Bioethics (CDBI). He has been Member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE) since 2005. He is also Member of the National Consultative Bioethics Committee (Ministry of Health), of the Research Ethics Committee (Faculty of Medicine), and of the Health Ethics Committee on Clinical Trials (Ministry of Health); Ethical evaluator for the European Commission in FP6; participates in projects of Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe /ODIHR and UNESCO; Coordinator of the Future Generations Programme at the Foundation for International Studies of the University of Malta; Coordinator of the Euro-Mediterranean Programme on Intercultural Dialogue, Human Rights and Future Generations, also at the Foundation for International Studies, a programme supported by UNESCO; Member of editorial boards of international journals on bioethics, moral philosophy and theology; and Member of the Scientific Committee of the Centro di Ateneo di Bioetica at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, Italy.