Miranda Fricker gives the Uehiro Lectures at Oxford: 'Moral Pressures'

Miranda Fricker of New York University has given the 2026 Annual Uehiro Lectures at Oxford under the title "Moral Pressures: Bending Time, Shaping Wills".

Why Fricker matters#

Fricker's name is bound up with her 2007 book Epistemic Injustice. It gave a name to something that had until then been discussed only in scattered form: people can be deprived not merely of resources or rights but of standing as knowers.

She gathered this under two headings:

• Testimonial injustice: a person's word is given less credibility than it deserves because of prejudice about who they are. The patient who cannot get a doctor to hear the complaint; the witness whose statement is not taken seriously.
• Hermeneutical injustice: society does not yet possess the shared concept under which an experience could be named. Before the term "sexual harassment" came into use, those who suffered it had no words with which to describe it.

What is the new series about?#

The "moral pressures" of the Uehiro title point to the idea that morality works not only through rules and reasons but through everyday pressures — expectation, reproach, gratitude. It is a thread running through Fricker's earlier work as well: morality lives in the reciprocal attitudes between people before it lives in abstract principles.

Columbia in the same year#

Fricker also gave Columbia University's John Dewey Lectures in 2026. Supported by the American Philosophical Association, the series is reserved for figures who have left a mark on their field.