Meet the Dignity Initiative

Podcast Episode No 1, Season 2: Listen Here

The Dignity Initiative began with the objective of arriving at a definition of dignity.

We began by delving into the existing corpus of work that has been done to conceptualize dignity.

By studying the various approaches from research in philosophy, sociology, law and bioethics, and drawing on the most advanced theories in order to contextualize, nuance and sharpen the definition of dignity, the concept can be used in programming, advocacy, health and policy interventions. Not only do we need a working definition that is developmentally, culturally and gender-appropriate, we also need a concept that can be operationalized, if the concept of dignity is to be used for interventions that are designed to improve the health and wellbeing of people around the world, and to monitor the effects of interventions. So, another major goal of the project was to consider how best to measure dignity and its correlates.

We drew together the voices of experts in multiple fields whose work touches on dignity: activists, the NGO community, global and local healthcare, psychiatrists, epidemiologists, philosophers and beyond.

This short podcast introduces the project and some of the experts we spoke to over the course of a year.

The podcast was voiced by Courtney Kirkby.