Nigel Biggar
Nigel Biggar is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, where he directs the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, and Public Life. He is also Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Pusey House, Oxford. He holds a B.A. in Modern History from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. in Christian Theology & Ethics from the University of Chicago.
Described as “one of the leading living Western ethicists” (by John Gray, formerly Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, in New Statesman, 25 November 2020), Professor Biggar was appointed Commander of the British Empire “for services to higher education” in the 2021 Queen’s Birthday Honours list. And in December 2023 he was named by Prospect magazine one of 25 Top Thinkers of 2024.
Among his most recent books are Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (William Collins, 2023), What’s Wrong with Rights? (Oxford, 2020) and In Defence of War (Oxford, 2013).
In the press, he has written on the possibility of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Northern Ireland in the Irish Times, on the Iraq war in the Financial Times, on Scottish independence in Standpoint magazine, on the morality of Britain’s nuclear deterrent in The Scottish Review, and on Charlie Hebdo and freedom of speech in The Times.
He has lectured at the Royal College of Defence Studies, London; the UK Defence Academy, Shrivenham; the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr, Hamburg; the US Military Academy, West Point; the US Naval Academy, Annapolis; and the National Defense University, Washington, DC.
His hobbies include walking over battlefields. In 1973 he drove a Morris Traveller from Scotland to Afghanistan; and in 2015 and 2017 he trekked across the mountains of central Crete in the footsteps of Patrick Leigh-Fermor and his comrades, when they abducted General Kreipe in April-May 1944. He enjoys playing an anarchical card-game.