Center for Phenomenological Bioethics
A dedicated research center integrating phenomenological method with bioethics, clinical ethics, and health policy — publishing the first journal in the field.
Scroll to exploreOur mission
The Center for Phenomenological Bioethics cultivates rigorous, pluralistic, and clinically attuned scholarship that expands bioethical method by integrating phenomenological description, interpretive analysis, narrative approaches, and critical frameworks.
We reorient ethical inquiry toward the lived dimensions of illness, disability, mental health, pregnancy and birth, aging, caregiving, and medical technologies — while building productive bridges between normative theory and the everyday worlds of clinical practice and health policy.
Our work treats first-person experience, intersubjectivity, embodiment, temporality, and lifeworld structures as ethically significant without reducing ethics to subjective report.
Lived experience
We place the first-person, embodied perspective at the center of bioethical reflection, resisting abstractions that lose sight of the patient, the caregiver, and the clinician.
Intersubjectivity
Health is always relational. Our work attends to the structures of recognition, empathy, and shared worlds through which clinical encounters take place.
Critical openness
We welcome hermeneutics, feminist phenomenology, narrative and qualitative clinical phenomenology, and global-critical perspectives alongside classical traditions.
Clinical relevance
Research speaks directly to real-world care practices, institutional ethics, and professional formation — not only to abstract philosophical norms.
Our publication
JPB is the first dedicated venue for phenomenological bioethics: scholarship that integrates lived experience, embodiment, intersubjectivity, and lifeworld analysis into normative bioethics, technology, AI, clinical ethics, and health policy reflection.
While phenomenology-informed bioethical work currently appears dispersed across general bioethics, philosophy of medicine, and medical humanities journals, JPB provides a stable, recognizable home for this scholarship and builds an international scholarly community across philosophy, clinical ethics, psychiatry, nursing ethics, qualitative health research, and medical humanities.
Scope includes
Article formats
Leadership
Webinars & Writing
This page gathers resources on phenomenological bioethics — from the Center and from the wider field. We list key books, articles, lectures, and podcasts that advance this emerging discipline, alongside our own public presence on YouTube and Substack.
Video lectures, recorded conference papers, and short "Phenomenology Pills" on phenomenological bioethics, emotions, empathy, AI in medicine, and the philosophy of lived experience.
Selected books and essays at the intersection of phenomenology, bioethics, and everyday life. Combining philosophical rigor with personal and clinical narrative.
Key Books
Key Articles
Lectures & Webinars
Practice
The Center supports the practice of philosophical counseling — bringing phenomenological method and continental philosophy to bear on the ethical and existential challenges of actual life. Dr. Ferrarello has worked as a philosophical counselor for over ten years in Italy, France, and the United States, drawing on Husserl's concept of practical intentionality to help clients clarify the foundations of their choices, navigate difficult decisions, and recover a sense of personal freedom and vitality.
Unlike psychotherapy, philosophical counseling works not through diagnosis or treatment but through sustained inquiry: attending carefully to lived experience, clarifying values, and thinking through the meaning of one's situation with philosophical rigor and genuine care.
One-on-one inquiry for individuals navigating significant decisions, life transitions, professional and existential dilemmas, intimacy and relationship questions, burnout, or questions of meaning and identity.
Philosophical accompaniment for those navigating pregnancy, parenthood, perinatal loss, or reproductive decisions — drawing on Dr. Ferrarello's research on the phenomenology of early motherhood and her work with No Bump No Care.
Facilitated workshops for teams, clinical settings, and organizations: ethical decision-making, navigating workplace conflict philosophically, and the emotional foundations of care professions.
For leaders, HR and DEI professionals, and executives seeking to integrate ethical clarity into practice — exploring the phenomenology of responsibility, the limits of empathy, and the philosophical underpinnings of leadership.
Sessions available in English and Italian, online and in person (Bay Area · Basel).
Partner network
No Bump No Care is a partner network committed to prenatal and perinatal care equity — grounding advocacy and research in the lived experiences of those most affected by gaps in access, quality, and recognition in maternity care.
The Center for Phenomenological Bioethics and No Bump No Care share a commitment to centering embodied, first-person experience in health ethics and policy. Their work on perinatal vulnerability, relational autonomy, and structural injustice in maternal health connects directly to JPB's thematic scope in reproduction and perinatal ethics.
Visit No Bump No Care ↗Care begins before the first appointment.
A network dedicated to closing the gaps in prenatal care through lived-experience research, advocacy, and community.
Submit to JPB
We welcome research articles, clinical interventions, conceptual pieces, and book reviews. To begin the process, please send a short abstract, outline, or initial idea using the form below. The editors will respond within two weeks.
Thank you — your submission has been received. The editors will be in touch within two weeks at the email address you provided.
Support
The Center for Phenomenological Bioethics is an independent research center. We receive no institutional block funding — our work is sustained entirely by the generosity of individuals and institutions who believe that phenomenological inquiry has a vital role to play in bioethics, clinical care, and public life.
Your support helps us:
We are grateful for contributions of any size. If you represent a foundation, institution, or granting body interested in partnership, please contact us directly.
Donations are received by Dr. Susi Ferrarello on behalf of the Center for Phenomenological Bioethics.
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