Our Ten Year Appeal

The next 10 years: will you make it possible?

The Centre is now celebrating its tenth anniversary.

When we began the Centre 10 years ago, we faced massive difficulties. The term “animal ethics” was hardly known. The University of Oxford was in the middle of a public controversy over the building of the new “animal lab” and public discussion of animal ethics was not encouraged to say the least. The University did not support the Centre, and still doesn’t. Even animal advocates were unsure about supporting intellectual work rather than “practical” work for animals. We had then, and now, little money; all the money had to be raised (then and now) by donations and sponsorship.

And yet we have succeeded beyond all expectations. We have

• established an international Fellowship of more than 100 accomplished and promising academics, making us the premiere centre of animal ethics in the world;

• pioneered the new Journal of Animal Ethics with the University of Illinois Press, and published more than 10 separate issues;

• created a new book series on animal ethics with Palgrave Macmillan publishers with more than 20 volumes, and many more forthcoming;

• organised one international conference and three Annual Oxford Animal Ethics Summer Schools, and

• helped spawn the Oxford University Animal Ethics Society with more than 500 members.

All in all, we have begun to succeed in our aim of putting animals on the intellectual agenda, by fostering academic research, teaching, and publication.

But we haven’t finished yet. We have ambitious plans for the next 10 years. We want, inter alia, to

• create a professional qualification for academics who want to teach and research animal ethics;

• make good on our promise to develop an online Animals’ Archive for scholars and students;

• establish a Visiting Fellowship programme, so academics can pursue research at Oxford;

• make a full-length film on animal ethics and the work of the Centre;

• develop new lines of research and study on, inter alia, the ethics of captivity, animal law, children and animals, animals in entertainment, the protection of cetaceans, companion animals, and many other topics;

• establish an annual animal ethics Graduate Student Scholarship, so students can study with us, and

• create a Fellowship Research Grant, for one-off urgent projects for struggling academics. Just five hundred donations of £10 each would make it happen.

All this (and more) will only be possible with your support. We don’t as a rule send out appeals for help, but this time is an exception. Without an injection of new funds we cannot begin to make further progress. This is why we are directly appealing to you.

Please send us whatever you can, no matter how small. It will be your contribution to a better world for animals. We want to achieve more in the next 10 years than we have in the past, but we can only do so with your help.

Every good wish

The Revd Professor Andrew Linzey

Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics