Maggie Little

Dr. Little is Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, and Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown. Her research interests include issues in reproduction, clinical research ethics, data ethics, and the structure of moral theory.

A Rhodes Scholar and fellow of the Hastings Center, she has twice served as Visiting Scholar in residence at the National Institutes of Health Department of Bioethics, and was appointed to the Ethics Committee of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology. She is co-founder of The Second Wave Initiative, which works to promote responsible research into the health needs of pregnant women.

In her previous role as Director of the Kennedy Institute, Dr. Little oversaw a time of transformative development, including the launch of the world’s first Introduction to Bioethics MOOC in April 2014; the inauguration of Conversations in Bioethics, an annual campus-wide event focused on a critical issue in bioethics; the deployment of a series of experimental undergraduate courses utilizing project-based learning and design studio methods. Dr. Little is founder and Director of EthicsLab, a unique team of Philosophers and Designers at Georgetown University that develops new methods to help people build ethical frameworks to better address real-world problems. Ethics Lab works to help surface the moral values at stake in emerging, complex issues, including data ethics and AI, to help build responsible progress. She is a founding co-chair of the Tech and Society Initiative at Georgetown.