NIGEL BIGGAR is Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, and 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. And he is a priest in the Church of England.
Described as “one of the leading living Western ethicists” (by John Gray, formerly Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, 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 named one of Prospect magazine’s Top Thinkers of 2024.
Among his most recent books are Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (William Collins, 2023, 2024), What’s Wrong with Rights? (Oxford, 2020), Between Kin and Cosmopolis: An Ethic of the Nation (2014), and In Defence of War (Oxford, 2013).
In the press, he has written on the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Spectator (London), colonialism in the National Post (Toronto), freedom of speech in the Times (London), the ‘Culture Wars’ and illegal migration in the Daily Telegraph (London), the Iraq War in the Financial Times (London) and the Straits Times (Singapore), and the possibility of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission for Northern Ireland in the Irish Times (Dublin).
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.
