Brenda Almond

As of 2022, Almond is a professor emeritus at Hull University.

She was awarded an Honorary doctorate by the University of Utrecht in 1998. In 1999 she was named an elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Almond also organised and reported on academic conferences on the issue including one held at Surrey University in 1986 focussing on medical confidentiality and discrimination and the Third International Conference on AIDS in Washington in 1987.

Almond co-founded the Society for Applied Philosophy in 1982 with her then colleague at Surrey University Anthony O'Hear and co-founded the International Journal of Applied Philosophy in 1983 part of a conscious strategy of moving philosophy away from abstract and abstruse debates towards issues that affect people in their everyday lives. Almond’s writing highlights issues like health and family and social relations. In 1887, at a time when HIV/AIDS was still barely understood, she wrote in The Times on the difficult balance of health and safety over risk and freedom. “What is clear”, she wrote, “is that in the absence of a vaccine or cure, the virus will increasingly move towards the centre of the world stage”. Almond went on to write a book setting out key debates in the area called AIDS: A Moral Issue (MacMillan) in 1990. Among the topics discussed here are confidentiality, autonomy and welfare, the role of the media, legal implications of infection in Britain and the US, coping with the threat of death, along with some theological reflections.

Brenda Margaret Almond (née Cohen; 19 September 1937) is a British philosopher, known for her work on philosophy of education and applied ethics. She is an elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.