Professor Ara Paul Barsam, DPhil

completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford where he served as Tutor in the Study of Religions in the Faculty of Theology. Presently, Dr Barsam is an Associate Research Professor at Arizona State University where he also serves as the Senior Director for Grants and Research in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. He has also held positions with the Armenian Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Embassy in Armenia. Dr Barsam has written numerous articles on theology and animals, including entries on ‘St Francis of Assisi’ and ‘Albert Schweitzer’ (with Andrew Linzey) in Fifty Key Thinkers on the Environment, edited by J. A. Palmer, (Routledge, 2001), and co-authored with Andrew Linzey, an entry on ‘Cloning of Animals in Genetic Research: Ethical and Religious Issues’ in David N. Cooper (Editor-in-chief) Nature Encyclopaedia of the Human Genome (London: Nature Publishing Group, 2003). His acclaimed book: Reverence for Life: Albert Schweitzer’s Great Contribution to Ethical Thought was published by Oxford University Press in 2009.

Professor Mark H. Bernstein, PhD

holds the Joyce and Edward E Brewer Chair in Applied Ethics at Purdue University. He specialises in animal ethics, more specifically on the issues of animals’ moral status, and the extent, scope, and content of human obligations to nonhuman animals. In addition to working on papers in these areas, Professor Bernstein is in the process of writing a book arguing that both the considerability of the interests of nonhuman animals and the value of the lives of nonhuman animals are as significant as their human counterparts. Professor Bernstein’s books include Fatalism (University of Nebraska Press, 1992), On Moral Considerability (Oxford University Press, 1998), and Without A Tear (University of Illinois Press, 2004).

Dr Aysha Akhtar, MD, MPH

Aysha Akhtar, M.D., M.P.H., is the President and CEO of the Center for Contemporary Sciences, which is catalyzing the world’s transition away from unreliable animal experiments to innovative medical research and testing. She is a double-board certified neurologist and preventive medicine specialist, with a background in public health. Previously she served as Deputy Director of the U.S. Army Traumatic Brain Injury Program developing the Army’s Brain Injury prevention and treatment strategies for soldiers. As a Commander in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Dr. Akhtar frequently deployed to assist with national public health emergencies. For a decade, Dr. Akhtar was a Medical Officer at the Food and Drug Administration, most recently in the Office of Counterterrorism and Emerging Threats, implementing studies on vaccine effectiveness and safety and using her Top Secret Security Clearance to develop national preparedness strategies for public health threats.  She is published in peer-reviewed journals including The Lancet, Pediatrics, Journal of Public Health Policy, and Reviews in the Neurosciences. Dr. Akhtar is the author of the two books, Our Symphony With Animals. On Health, Empathy and Our Shared Destinies.  and Animals and Public Health, which argues for the need for health institutions to include animals as part of the “public” in public health. She is a TEDx speaker.

Dr Jarrod Bailey, PhD

is Director of Medical Research at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. He received his degree in Genetics and PhD in viral genetics from Newcastle University in the 1990s. He has evaluated the scientific validity and human relevance of animal models in biomedical research and drug/product testing. In addition, Dr Bailey has reviewed the limitations of using nonhuman primates and other animals in various fields of research, including the testing of substances that can cause birth defects and cancer; the use of chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates in various forms of medical research including HIV/AIDS, cancer and hepatitis; the use genetically modified animals to research diseases such as cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, among others; and the use of dogs, monkeys and other species in pre-clinical testing of new human drugs. He has authored several substantial scientific petitions and submissions of evidence to a variety of British, European and U.S. inquiries into the validity of animal research, and nonhuman primate research in particular, and has taken part in many debates on animal research both in public and in the political arena, at the UK, European, Belgian and Italian parliaments.

Professor Boris Bakota, PhD

is Professor of Administrative Law and Administration at the Faculty of Law, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek, Croatia. Apart from teaching administrative law and administration, he also teaches the first graduate course in  Croatia in Animal Law. He is the Dean of Faculty of Law since 2014 and a member of University Senate. He was the President (2012 – 2016) of  the European Network of Training Organizations for Local and Regional Authorities (ENTO). Professor Bakota  is the member of Group of Independent Experts for European Charter for Local Self-Government within the Council of Europe, and has been appointed member of Croatian Parliament’s Committee for Local and Regional Self-Government. His main research interests are local and regional government, public administration, animal law and welfare. He has been volunteering in for an animal shelter in Osijek for many years, and has taken part in an analysis of domestic and international legal documents concerning animal law and welfare.

Dr Alan W. Bates, MD, PhD, FRCPath

is Honorary Senior Lecturer in Pathology at University College, London, a Consultant to the Royal Free Hospital, and Coroner’s pathologist for North London and the City of London. He studied comparative embryology at Queen Mary College, London, trained as a medical historian at the Welcome Institute in London. Dr Bates is the author of various books and articles on the history of anatomy and embryology, including The Anatomy of Robert Knox (Sussex Academic Press, 2010), which stimulated his interest in transcendentalism and in medical opposition to experimentation on animals. Ongoing research interests include virtue ethics, antivivisection hospitals, and alternative medicine. He is currently writing a history of antivivisection and medicine for the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series.

Professor Sarah M. Bexell, PhD

is Clinical Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Social Work, Director of Humane Education in the Institute for Human Animal Connection, and Faculty Director of the Center for Sustainability, all at the University of Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA. She worked for over 20 years for critically endangered species on the brink of extinction, including golden lion tamarins and callimicos (Brazil), giant pandas and red pandas (China), and black-footed ferrets (North America). Through this work it became clear that all species, including our own, are placed in jeopardy and endure immense suffering due to a plethora of value orientations that uphold human supremacy. Today she works at the interface of human rights and the rights of all other species to thrive and persist toward creating a regenerative future for life on Earth. Her current work includes leading an academic focus in ecological justice, building a framework for regenerative education, and studying the mental health impacts of global environmental change with a focus on the sixth mass extinction. In her free time, she rescues dogs in China and fosters dogs in the U.S. 

Professor Faith Bjalobok, PhD

is Adjunct Professor at the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne University and also Adjunct Professor at the Department of Philosophy at Chatham College, Pittsburgh. She was formerly lecturer at West Virginia University Department of Humanities, Philosophy and Religious Studies. In 2006, she completed her doctorate at Duquesne University with a dissertation on ‘Kantian Meadows: A Just Nursing Home Grounded in the Categorical Imperative’. She has taught courses on Logic, Biomedical Ethics, Feminism, Business Ethics, and the Philosophy of Law. Dr Bjalobok’s research interests are in applied ethics in general and the animal question in particular. She is especially concerned with our moral obligation to ageing and ill non-human animals with whom we have shared our lives. Her current book project is The Barn (based on her own experience of caring for rescued and homeless animals) which examines all the animals that live there, their relationships with each other, and with her as primarily the caregiver and food source. The goal is to apply different philosophical perspectives on friendship and other relations to the relationships that the animals share. She also intends to critically examine the society at the barn in relation to Plato’s idea of the just city (simple city).

Sidney Blankenship

is an independent scholar and life-long resident of the southern grasslands of central North America, where he has restored a herd of American bison and lived with many other animals under the authority of the USDA Animal Welfare Act and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. His degrees are from Abilene Christian (Texas), BA in Bible and Greek (1966); one year of Divinity School at Edinburgh, Scotland (1967); and Oxford University, BA and MA in Theology (1969, 1974). Primary academic interests involve animal ethics from Native America and religious perspectives drawn mainly from Jewish and Christian theology. Published works include “Native American Religion: Restoring Species to the Circle of Life,” in the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Ethics (Linzey and Linzey, eds., 2019), “Ecological Hermeneutics and Native American Ethics,” in Christina Nellist, ed., Climate Crisis and Creation Care (Cambridge Scholars, 2021), and “Corpse ‘Contamination’ as a Religious Approach to Fur” in The Ethics of Fur (Linzey and Linzey, eds,) forthcoming from Lexington. Several presentations have been made on these subjects for the OCAE Summer Schools since 2016. Unpublished works include “Animals and Culture” (Warwick University, 1994) for the International Research Network for Environment and Society and “Wolves in the Bible as Shaping Human Perception,” for the International Wolf Symposium (Duluth, MN, 2018) A decades-long research project culminating in a book on the Animals of Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14 has been prepared for publication, as well as detailed research for a Concordance of Biblical Animals. 

Dr Gieri Bolliger, PhD

is an Attorney-at-Law and began working for the Stiftung für das Tier im Recht (TIR; Foundation for the Animal in the Law) in Zurich/Switzerland in 2000. He has been TIR’s executive director since 2007. Since publishing his dissertation on European Animal Law in 2000 (summa cum laude), he has worked as an editor, author and co-author, and has written twelve books, including “Das Tier im Recht – 99 Facetten der Mensch-Tier Beziehung von A bis Z” (2003), the short commentary “Schweizer Tierschutzstrafrecht in Theorie und Praxis” (2011, fully revised edition in 2019), the monograph “Sexualität mit Tieren (Zoophilie) – eine rechtliche Betrachtung” (2011), and the English book “Animal Dignity Protection in Swiss Law – Status Quo and Future Perspectives” (2016). In addition, he has published various expert opinions and more than 200 articles on national and international animal law. In 2013, Gieri Bolliger was the first non-American lawyer to complete the postgraduate “Master of Animal Law” (LL.M.) at the Center for Animal Law Studies (CALS) at the Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland (Oregon/USA). In 2014/2015 he was also the first “International Visiting Research Scholar” at CALS. Since 2005 he has held a teaching position for animal law at the University of Zurich. He has also taught animal law at the law schools of Lucerne, Barcelona, and Portland and has lectured on the legal aspects of the human-animal relationship at countless conferences and training events in Switzerland and abroad. From 1999 to 2009, Gieri Bolliger was also a member and animal welfare delegate of the Zurich Animal Testing Committee and, from 2011 to 2015, of the Zurich Animal Welfare Committee.

Professor Karen Bradshaw, JD

is a Professor of Law at the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law Arizona State University, where she teaches Property, Contracts, Environmental Law, Natural Resources, and Biodiversity. She is a Senior Sustainability Scientist at the Global Institute of Sustainability and a Faculty Affiliate Scholar at the New York University School of Law Classical Liberal Institute. Bradshaw is the author of the internationally acclaimed book Wildlife as Property Owners: A New Conception of Animal Rights. Wildlife as Property Owners was featured in the Official 2022 GRAMMY gift bags and was “highly recommended” in a Forbes book review. Bradshaw’s research and writing has been featured in prominent national media outlets including Forbes, Fortune, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, National Public Radio, NPR’s Planet Money, and the New York Times. She has published over twenty-five academic articles and a book on wildfire. Her transdiscplinary work includes collaborations with artists, economists, scientists, philosophers, nongovernmental organizations, and government agencies. Bradshaw was the Desert Humanities Institute Fellow for 2021-2022 and recipient of the 2020 Stegner Young Scholar Award. Bradshaw earned a JD with honors from University of Chicago Law School, an MBA from California State University, Chico and a BS in Business Administration from University of California, Berkeley. She grew up near the Klamath and McCloud Rivers and now resides in the Sonoran desert on rewilded land that is Certified Wildlife Habitat. 

Dr Idan Breier, PhD

is a Senior Lecturer in the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at Bar-Ilan University (Ramat-Gan, Israel), Dr Idan Breier received both his graduate and post-graduation degrees from this institution. His principal scholarly interest lies in biblical and ancient Near Eastern history in general and the international relations of this period in light of modern political science theories in particular. His publications in this area including discussions of the political and social history during the extended El-Amarna period (1460–1200 BCE) and the late First Temple period (640–586 BCE). In recent years, he has expanded his focus to human-animal relations in biblical and ancient Near Eastern societies and the ethical aspects of this field as reflected in the primary sources and Second Temple, talmudic, and modern Jewish theologico-philosophical literature. His third book—An Ethical View of Human-Animal Relations in the Ancient Near East (forthcoming in the Palgrave-Macmillan Animal Ethics series), complements various scholarly articles on related subjects: “Humans and Wild Animals in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Texts:  Interactions and Metaphors,” Anthrozoӧs 31.6 (2018), pp. 657–72; “Animals in Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Law: Tort and Ethical Laws,” Journal of Animal Ethics 18.2 (2018), pp. 166–81; “Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935): Biblical Ethics as the Basis of Rav Kook’s Vision of Vegetarianism and Peace,” in A. Linzey and C. Linzey (eds.), Animal Theologians (forthcoming).

Professor Cini Bretzlaff-Holstein, DSW

is the Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) Program Director, Social Work Department Chair, and Associate Professor of Social Work at Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, IL. Additionally, she is a licensed social worker in the state of Illinois. She completed her Master of Social Work (MSW) degree at Baylor University’s Diana R. Garland School of Social Work in Waco, TX, and her Doctor of Social Work (DSW) degree at St. Catherine University-University of St. Thomas’ School of Social Work in St. Paul, MN. Professor Bretzlaff-Holstein completed her banded dissertation (three publishable articles- 1 research-based, 2 conceptual) for the doctoral program entitled The Case for Humane Education in Social Work Education. One of her conceptual articles was published in the international journal Social Work Education. Her research article has been submitted for publication to the international journal entitled Journal of Social Work Education. Her scholarly interests include food justice, environmental and ecological justice, social work education and humane education, and the human-animal bond in social work. Furthermore, she is currently exploring veganism and the professoriate as a research project in her scholarship agenda.

The Revd Dr Susan I. Bubbers, DMin, PhD

is Dean of the Center for Anglican Theology in Orlando, Florida, USA. She also serves as the Professor of Sacramental Theology, and is currently working toward developing a Diaconate Training Curriculum.  She has published book reviews in the Evangelical Quarterly, devotional articles for Zondervan, and two monographs: Pet Prayers, which is a book of prayers for personal and pastoral use, and A Scriptural Theology of Eucharistic Blessings, which is a seminary textbook for Eucharistic Theology.  She is a member of the IBR/SBL, including a presented and published article in the area of Hermeneutics.  She teaches the online Hermeneutics Course for MDiv students of Olivet University. Dr Bubbers ongoing research interests include: Christological Spiritual Formation, Hermeneutical Methods, Sacramental Theology, and Animal Ethics.  The focus of an upcoming research project will be a biblical theology of the ontology of animal souls, providing a resource for seminaries to equip pastors with a solid biblical basis for teaching that animals do go to heaven, and to equip pastors to prioritize animal welfare and provide pastoral care to carer of companion animals. Dr Bubbers received her MDiv from Regent University, DAS from Virginia Theological Seminary, DMin from Reformed Theological Seminary, and PhD from the London School of Theology.  She was ordained an Anglican Priest in January, 1995.  She has served as the pastor of three churches, as a University Chaplain, and is currently involved with the Anglican church-plant in Celebration, FL.

Dr Eleanor Burt, PhD, FHEA

is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Management at the University of St Andrews. For almost three decades her specialism has been the philanthropic sector, with a particular focus on the strategic management of voluntary and charitable organisations in the ‘digital age’. Although an ethical vegan since the 9th of December 1991, her scholarly engagement with the nonhuman animal-human animal relationship began relatively recently. The questions she is now driven to answer are twofold. Firstly, can we re-imagine and re-shape the nonhuman -human animal relationship, respecting the needs and desires of nonhuman animals, and according them equal place in the world?;  Secondly, what measures should be taken to achieve this? The intellectual journey along which Dr Burt is travelling, as she seeks answers to these questions, is leading her to explore and examine a range of fields (e.g. animal ethics, animal psychology, ecology), and perspectives (e.g., ecocentrism, veganism) which contribute both to our understanding of nonhuman animals and to our relationship with them. Insights generated from emergent empirical and philosophical contributions from the natural and social sciences, and the humanities are prompting her to consider the value and feasibility of an holistic multi-disciplinary approach to re-imagining and re-shaping the extant relationship between human and nonhuman animals. While the questions which Dr Burt seeks to address are simple ones, the answers, of course, are not. Each of the deeply complex existential challenges faced today by human and nonhuman animals alike demands an holistic response, yet its delivery, conceptually and in practice, remains profoundly challenging. The necessarily more modest under-pinning from which this work proceeds, therefore, lies in understanding the dominant and powerful institutionalised narratives presently ordering the human – nonhuman animal relationship.  Re-imagining how an appropriate and effective alternative narrative would reshape that relationship will follow.

Professor Deborah Cao, PhD

is a Professor at Griffith University, Australia. She is a linguist and animal  law scholar and advocate, specializing in animal law and ethics, and legal semiotics, legal translation and Chinese legal language and culture. For the past decade, she has been working to promote the reconsideration of human and nonhuman animal relationships as an intellectual and ethical concern in Chinese culture and society and the criminalization of acts of cruelty against animals in Chinese law. Her books on animal laws include  Animals are not Things: Animal Law in the West (2007 in Chinese), Animal Law in Australia and New Zealand (Thomson Reuters, 2010), While the Dog Gently Weeps (2012, in Chinese), Animal Law in Australia (Thomson Reuters, 2015), Animals in China: Law and Society (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015),  Have You Ever Thought About the Pig’s Feelings: Farm Animal Welfare Law and Regulation in China and Beyond (forthcoming, in Chinese), and edited books include Animal Law and Welfare: International Perspectives (Springer, 2016) and Scientific Perspectives to Farm Animal Welfare (2018, in Chinese).

Dr Margarita Carretero-González , PhD

is Senior Lecturer of English Literature at the English and German Department of the University of Granada, Spain. She holds a PhD in English Literature (cum laude with distinction) and her research interest focuses on studying the relationship between human culture and other-than-human nature as presented in literature and other artistic discourses. She regularly participates in national and international forums on ecocriticism and is the author of Fantasía, épica y utopia en The Lord of the Rings: análisis temático y de la recepción (Servicio de publicaciones de la Universidad de Granada, 1997), and co-editor of Beyond the Veil of Familiarity: C.S. Lewis (1898-1998) (Peter Lang, 2001). Her most recent publication is “Another Cassandra’s Cry”: Mary Wollstonecraft’s “Universal Benevolence” as Ecofeminist Praxis”. Feninismo/s 22: 225-249. Margarita is a scholar in the Human-Animal Studies programme of the Animal and Society Institute, and of the European Association for the Study of Culture, Literature and the Environment. She was a member of the association’s advisory board from 2008 to 2012, and managing co-editor of its journal Ecozon@ from its foundation in 2009 till 2014.

Professor David N. Cassuto, PhD, JD

is Professor of Law at Pace Law School, where he teaches in the fields of animal law, environmental law, and property and also directs the Brazil-American Institute for Law and the Environment (BAILE).  He serves on the board of the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) and is also the Class of 1946 Distinguished Visiting Professor of Environmental Law at Williams College, and a Visiting Professor of Law at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil.  He speaks and writes frequently on animal law and policy as well as many other topics within environmental law and environmental and cultural studies.  In addition to several books and many articles on topics ranging from food ethics to water as cultural signifier to climate change and factory farms, Professor Cassuto is also the founder and principal contributor to the Animal Blawg (www.animalblawg.wordpress.com), a blog on animal law, ethics, and policy.  In 2012, Professor Cassuto was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Third World Congress on Bioethics and Animal Rights held in Recife Brazil.

Professor Jodey Castricano, PhD

is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of British Columbia (Okanagan), Canada. A scholar in the history of ideas of the nineteenth century, as well as a life-long animal rights advocate, her research has turned towards the ethical obligations that humans have towards their non-human counterparts. Contributing editor to Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World (Wilfrid Laurier University Press) and Animal Subject 2.0, (with Corman, WLU) and Critical Perspectives on Veganism (with Simonsen) Castricano is motivated by contemporary issues regarding exploitation of animals in industries such as animal agriculture, scientific research and forms of “entertainment”.  Further to publications, Castricano has taught courses in Critical Animal Studies for over a decade and has supervised a number of PhD and MA students who have gone on to advocate for other animals in law, in communications and higher education.  Her research aims to call into question the boundaries that divide the animal kingdom from humanity, focusing on the medical, biological, cultural, philosophical, and ethical concerns between non-human animals and ourselves. As a scholar and activist, she works to end animal exploitation in factory farming, product testing, and laboratory experimentation, as well in zoos, rodeos, circuses, and public aquariums.

Dr Mark Causey, PhD

is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, Religion, and Liberal Studies at Georgia College & State University. Mark earned his PhD in Philosophy at Emory University with a dissertation on Gilles Deleuze and his philosophical appropriation of the work of the French Surrealist, Antonin Artaud. At Georgia College, he has designed and regularly teaches undergraduate classes on Food Ethics, Environmental Ethics, and Animal Ethics. Mark’s main current research interest is in the intersections of veganism, environmentalism, animal rights, and social justice (with a particular interest in Indigenous perspectives). His article, “Nietzsche’s Hyperanthropos-Centrism” was published in The Trumpeter Journal of deep ecology (2014). His article, “Fellow Creatures: The Humean Case for Animal Ethics” was published in Between the Species (2015).  Mark has more recently written an argument piece for the Journal of Animal Ethics (2019) which investigates a virtue ethics approach.

Professor Andrew Chignell, PhD

is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.  His main interests are in seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy, especially Kant and the rationalists.  He also regularly co-teaches an undergraduate course on the “The Ethics of Eating” which was recently converted into a Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on the EdX platform.  The first edition of the course enrolled almost 14,000 students from over 130 countries (https://www.edx.org/course/ethics-eating-cornellx-phil1440x).  He is co-editor (with Matthew Halteman and Terence Cuneo) of Philosophy Comes to Dinner: Arguments About the Ethics of Eating (Routledge, 2015) (www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Comes-Dinner-Arguments-Ethics/dp/0415806836/) and is a contributor to the Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics.

Professor Grace Clement, PhD

is a Professor of Philosophy at Salisbury University in Maryland, where she teaches a wide variety of courses related to animals, feminism, the history of ethics, human nature, modern philosophy and logic. She is especially interested in questions of animal ethics as they relate to fundamental questions about the nature and boundaries of morality, and has written on the roles of justice and care in human moral relations to non-human animals and on questions about human-animal friendship and animal moral agency. Her publications include a book on feminist ethics, Care, Autonomy, and Justice: Feminism and the Ethic of Care (Westview, 1996), and a number of articles on animals and ethics appearing in journals such as Between the Species and the Journal of Animal Ethics, and in anthologies such as The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics (Columbia University Press, 2007).

Professor Kendra Coulter, PhD

is Professor in Management and Organizational Studies at Huron University College at Western University in Canada. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists, the Government of Ontario’s Animal Welfare Advisory Table, the City of London’s Animal Welfare Advisory Committee, and the Canadian Human-Animal Violence Link Coalition’s Strategic Planning Committee. Professor Coulter is an award-winning author, frequent media commentator, and global leader in the analysis of human-animal labour, animal protection, animal cruelty investigations and prevention, and horse-human work and wellbeing. Her latest book, Defending Animals: Inside the Front Lines of Animal Protection, was acquired by MIT Press after a multi-publisher auction. She is the author of Animals, Work, and the Promise of Interspecies Solidarity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and the co-editor, with Charlotte Blattner and Will Kymlicka, of Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? (Oxford University Press, 2020).

Professor Alice Crary, PhD

is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, where she is also a member of the Liberal Studies Department and founding co-director of the graduate program in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is a moral philosopher with wide-ranging interests. Her writing addresses issues in normative and meta-ethics, moral psychology, philosophy and literature, the philosophy of Wittgenstein, social epistemology, feminist theory and cognitive disability. Questions about animals and ethics have been a prominent concern of her teaching and research since she was a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of Beyond Moral Judgment (Harvard, 2007), and also a co-editor of The New Wittgenstein (Routledge, 2000), a co-editor of Reading Cavell (Routledge, 2005) and the editor of Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond (MIT, 2006). Her most recent book—Inside Ethics: On the Demands of Moral Thought (Harvard, 2016)—explores how human beings and animals enter moral thought, contributing simultaneously to ongoing practical debates about the moral standing of animals and about the moral standing of cognitively disabled human beings. She is currently working on a book, Moral Visibility, that continues her engagement with animals and cognitive disability—and that also builds on her work on gender—now with reference to the fact that, historically, many forms of racist, gender-based and ableist bias have functioned in part by means of invidious comparisons to animals.

Professor Keri Cronin, PhD

is an Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Brock University. She is also a Faculty Affiliate in Brock’s Social Justice and Equity Studies graduate programme and a founding member of the Social Justice Research Institute at Brock. She is the author of Manufacturing National Park Nature: Photography, Ecology, and the Wilderness Industry of Jasper (UBC Press) and the co-editor (with Kirsty Robertson) of Imagining Resistance: Visual Culture and Activism in Canada (Wilfrid Laurier University Press). Her latest book project, ‘Do Not Refuse to Look at These Pictures’: Visual Culture and Animal Advocacy, 1870-1914, is under contract with Penn State University Press. She is the curator of an exhibition called “Be Kind: The Visual History of Humane Education” which she developed for The Animal Museum. In addition to publishing in academic venues, she has also written several columns on the role of art in animal advocacy for Our Hen House. She has just launched a new multimedia project with Jo-Anne McArthur of We Animals called Unbound: Women on the Front Lines of Animal Advocacy.

Alice Di Concetto

is the founder of The European Institute for Animal Law & Policy, a Brussels-based think tank specialising in EU animal law and policies. She additionally is a lecturer in European animal law at the Sorbonne Law School and in animal ethics Sciences Po Law School (Paris, France). In 2016 – 2018, Alice completed an appointment as a fellow in the Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School. Her publication record includes several law review articles in journals, including the European Journal of Risk Regulation, the European Journal of Consumer Law, and the French Animal Law Review. She is the author of the forthcoming book EU Animal Law (Edward Elgar Publishing). Alice earned a master’s degree in Animal Law (LL.M, 2016) from Lewis & Clark Law School, for which she obtained a Fulbright grant. She graduated from Sciences Po Law School (Master’s Degree, 2015). 

Professor Daniel A. Dombrowski, PhD

is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University.  He is the author of twenty scholarly books, several of which deal with the topic of animal rights.  The Philosophy of Vegetarianism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984) could more appropriately be titled “Ancient Philosophical Vegetarianism” in that it deals with ancient Greek philosophy and the status of nonhuman animals.  Hartshorne and the Metaphysics of Animal Rights (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988) argues for animal rights in the context of process or neoclassical philosophy of religion.  Babies and Beasts: The Argument from Marginal Cases (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997) deals with the issue of moral patiency status as it relates to both nonhuman animals and nonrational human beings.  About one-third of another book deals with animal rights: Not Even a Sparrow Falls: The Philosophy of Stephen R.L. Clark (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000).  The stance in philosophy of religion that underlies much of his work in animal rights is detailed in Rethinking the Ontological Argument: A Neoclassical Theistic Response (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).  His ludic impulses are explored in Contemporary Athletics and Ancient Greek Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).  His latest book is Process Philosophy and Political Liberalism: Rawls, Whitehead, and Hartshorne (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019).

Laura Donnellan

teaches European law, and sport and the law at the University of Limerick, where she is also Course Director for Law and European Studies, and Law Plus. She has published in the areas of drug testing and the rights of athletes, elder law, the regulation of football agents, TV rights in Irish football, EC competition law, and animal welfare in the EU. She is currently co-authoring the third edition of Modern Irish Company Law with Professor Henry Ellis. She graduated with a master’s degree in Law from the University of Limerick in 2002, and is currently pursuing a PhD through the School of Law, at Queen’s University Belfast. Her doctoral work combines her interests in sport, law, and animal welfare by examining the regulation of animal cruelty in sport. She is examining animal welfare from a socio-legal perspective focusing on the development of animal related legislation in Ireland and Britain, and its application to animals involved in fox hunting, hare coursing, greyhound racing, and dog fighting.

Dr Chris Draper, PhD

is Head of Animal Welfare and Captivity at the Born Free Foundation. He studied zoology and primatology before starting work in animal protection. After exposure to the reality of animals in zoos, circuses and pseudo-sanctuaries, his career has involved investigation and research into the welfare of wild animals exploited in captivity. His PhD examined whether legislation and practice protects animals in zoos, and he has published articles on animal welfare and law relating to animals in zoos, circuses, as “pets” and in trophy hunting. He serves on the Editorial Board of the UK Journal of Animal Law, the Accreditation Committee for the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, and sits on the Wild Animal Welfare Committee.

Professor John Drew, PhD

is an assistant professor in the Department of English, French, and Writing at King’s University College at Western University on the traditional and treaty lands of the Anishnaabek, Haudenosaunee, Chonnonton, and Lūnaapéewak nations. He is an award-winning researcher who focuses on how human exceptionalism is embedded in education, specifically literary education, and the possibilities for alternative multispecies pedagogies. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Environmental Humanities, Journal of Childhood Studies, Humanimalia, Childhood Geographies, and Animal Studies Journal, and his book, Animals in Literary Education: Towards Multispecies Empathy, is being published by Springer in the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series. John’s teaching and scholarship focus on animals and nature in literature and film; multispecies empathy and justice; children, youth, and environmental education; decolonizing and anti-oppressive pedagogies; and writing and social change within the climate emergency. He recently designed an undergraduate course called Writing Humans and Other Animals in the Climate Emergency which links all of these areas of emphases. John is also a member of the Common Worlds Research Collective which is dedicated to multispecies concerns and relations in education. 

Dr Rainer Ebert, PhD

is a Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. Before coming to Dar es Salaam, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. He graduated from Rice University in Texas with a PhD in Philosophy in 2016. In his doctoral dissertation, he defends a novel account of the wrongness of killing, according to which it is no less seriously wrong to kill a non-human conscious animal than it is to kill a human being. He further holds Masters degrees in Philosophy (Rice University, 2014) and Physics (Heidelberg University, 2009). When he was an undergraduate student in Heidelberg, he organized Germany’s first interdisciplinary lecture series on animal rights. He edited the papers from the series in a book entitled Tierrechte – Eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung, published by Harald Fischer Verlag in 2007. Another edited book, Africa and Her Animals – Philosophical and Practical Perspectives, was published by the University of South Africa Press in 2018. It investigates the moral, social, cultural, religious, and legal status of non-human animals in Africa. His other relevant publications include “Innocent Threats and the Moral Problem of Carnivorous Animals”, Journal of Applied Philosophy 29 (2012), 146-159, which addresses the issue of predation and what it may imply morally, and “Mental-Threshold Egalitarianism: How Not to Ground Full Moral Status”, Social Theory and Practice 44 (2018), 75-93, which offers a defence of equality for all conscious animals.

Professor Mylan Engel Jr., PhD

is Presidential Engagement and Partnership Professor, Distinguished Teaching Professor, and Professor of Philosophy at Northern Illinois University and Faculty Associate of NIU’s Environment, Sustainability, and Energy Institute. He specializes in epistemology and animal ethics. Representative publications include: “The Immorality of Eating Meat” in The Moral Life (OUP, 2000), “The Mere Considerability of Animals” (2001), “Tierethik, Tierrechte, und moralische Integrität“ [“Animal Rights, Animal Ethics, and Moral Integrity”] in Tierrechte: Eine interdisziplinäre Herausforderung (Harald Fischer Verlag, 2007), “Vegetarianism” (2016), “Demystifying Animal Rights” (2018), “Fishy Reasoning and the Ethics of Eating” (2019), and “Epistemology and the Ethics of Animal Experimentation” in Applied Epistemology (OUP, 2021). As some of these titles suggest, he is an “ethical vegan”—i.e., he believes we are morally obligated to refrain from eating animals and animal products—and has argued that virtually all humans hold beliefs that, if consistently applied, would make them ethical vegans as well. He also argues that animal experimentation should be abolished. His books include: The Moral Rights of Animals (co-edited with Gary Comstock) and The Philosophy of Animal Rights: A Brief Introduction for Students and Teachers (co-authored with Kathie Jenni). 

Professor David Favre, JD

is Professor of Law at Michigan State University College of Law. Over the past thirty years, Professor Favre has written several articles and books dealing with animal issues, including such topics as animal cruelty, wildlife law, the use of animals for scientific research, the ethics of the respectful use of animals, and international control of animal trade. His books include the case book Animal Law: Welfare, Interest, and Rights (Second edition), Animal Law and Dog Behavior, and International Trade in Endangered Species. He introduced and has developed the concept of “Living Property” in a number of law review articles over the past decade. He also has presented to international audiences on a wide assortment of animal topics. He was a primary organiser in the two global animal law conferences that have been held, the most recent being in 2014 in Barcelona.  He created, and is editor-in-chief of, the largest animal legal web resource in the world, www.animallaw.info. He was a founding officer of the Animal Legal Defense Fund in 1983 and stayed on the Board for 22 years, serving as President of the Board for the last two of those years. Presently, he is the a Vice Chair of the American Bar Association/TIPS Committee on Animal Law, and in 2012 was chair of the AALS Animal Law Committee. Now residing on a farm in lower Michigan, Professor Favre shares his space with sheep, chickens, and the usual assortment of dogs and cats.

Professor Angela Fernandez, JSD

is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto, and cross-appointed to that university’s Department of History. She was a leader for four years of a Working Group at the University of Toronto’s Jackman Humanities Institute “Animals in the Law and Humanities” and contributor to the 2018-19 “Animal Law Lab” at the Faculty of Law. Professor Fernandez is the author of a book-length study on Pierson v. Post, the famous first possession case often used to begin the study of American (and sometimes Canadian) property law: Pierson v. Post, the Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018). She is an Associate Editor (Book Reviews) for Law and History Review and a member of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee of the American Society for Legal History. She is also on the Board of Directors for Animal Justice Canada.

Professor Amy Fitzgerald, PhD

is Full Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, and holds a hybrid appointment with the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, at the University of Windsor. She is the 2023-2025 University of Windsor Vice-President, Research and Innovation Research Chair. Her research focuses on the intersection of harms (criminal and otherwise) perpetrated against people, non-human animals, and the environment. She is currently working on three grant-funded projects, and has published many peer-reviewed articles, chapters, and books. Recent book publications include Animal Advocacy and Environmentalism: Understanding and Bridging the Divide (Polity Press) and The Animals Reader: The Essential Classic and Contemporary Writings (2nd ed., Routledge; co-edited with Linda Kalof). Fitzgerald is a founding member of the Animal and Interpersonal Abuse Research Group, the recipient of a Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Animals and Society section of the American Sociological Association, the Mid-Career Outstanding Faculty Research Award from the University of Windsor, and was a visiting research fellow in the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard University in 2020. 

Professor Clifton P. Flynn, PhD

is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Department of Sociology, Criminal Justice, and Women’s Studies at the University of South Carolina Upstate where he has taught since 1988. He is the past Chair of the Section on Animals and Society of the American Sociological Association. In 2010, he was selected as a Fellow of the Institute for Human-Animal Connection at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work. Dr Flynn serves on the editorial boards of both Society & Animals and the Journal of Animal Ethics, and served from 2005 to 2010 on the editorial board of Anthrozoos. In addition, he is on the editorial boards of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Book Series and the Brill Human-Animal Studies Book Series.  In 2001, his Animals and Society course was chosen as the ‘Best New Animals and Society Course’ by the Humane Society of the United States, and was featured on “The Osgood File” on CBS radio. Dr. Flynn has written numerous articles and chapters on animal abuse and its relationship to family violence, including ‘A Sociological Analysis of Animal Abuse’, in Frank Ascione’s (ed.) The International Handbook of Animal Abuse and Cruelty: Theory, Research, and Application (Purdue University Press, 2008) and ‘Women Battering, Pet Abuse and Human-Animal Relations’ in The Link between Animal Abuse and Human Violence (Sussex Academic Press, 2009), edited by Andrew Linzey. He is also the editor of one of the first anthologies in human-animal studies, Social Creatures: A Human and Animal Studies Reader (Lantern Books, 2008). Dr. Flynn’s most recent book is Understanding Animal Abuse: A Sociological Analysis (Lantern Books, 2012), in which he examines the social and cultural factors related to animal abuse and its connection to human violence and proposes recommendations for policy, professionals, and future research.

Sophie Gaillard

is an animal protection lawyer and the Director of Animal Advocacy and Legal Affairs at the Montreal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), where she oversees the organization’s efforts to strengthen animal protection legislation and public policy at the municipal, provincial and federal levels, in addition to serving as the organization’s head legal counsel. Sophie also has over six years of experience supervising the SPCA’s animal protection officers, who are charged with enforcing both the Criminal Code’s animal cruelty provisions and provincial animal protection legislation, as well as acting as a resource person for prosecutors and other law enforcement in animal cruelty matters. Sophie has played an instrumental role in securing significant victories for animals in Quebec, including putting an end to breed-specific legislation at both the municipal and provincial levels, successfully campaigning to have dogs allowed on Montreal’s public transit system and achieving a ban on horse-drawn carriages in Montreal as well as a province-wide ban on the declawing of cats. She is one of the instigators of the Animals are not Things manifesto which led to the adoption of a new provision in the Civil Code of Quebec recognizing animals as sentient beings and the passing of the first law exclusively devoted to animal protection in the province. Sophie also spearheads cutting-edge strategic litigation efforts to further animals’ interests in the legal system, namely by building on the recognition of animal sentience in Quebec law. She regularly testifies before legislative committees and works with politicians and political parties to advance animal protection, in addition to being profiled and cited in local, provincial and national media regarding animal law and protection matters. Sophie is a frequent lecturer on animal law and teaches this topic at McGill University’s Faculty of Law. She co-authored a chapter about the potential use of private prosecutions for animal advocates in Canadian Perspectives on Animals and the Law (2015). 

Professor Robert Garner, PhD

is Professor of Politics, and Head of the Department of Politics, at the University of Leicester. He has previously taught at the Universities of Exeter and Buckingham. He has published widely on the politics and philosophy of animal rights. His major publications are Political Animals (Macmillan, 1998); Animals, Politics and Morality (Manchester University Press, 2004, second edition); The Political Theory of Animal Rights (Manchester University Press, 2005), and Animal Ethics (Polity, 2005). The focus of Professor Garner’s principal research interest has been on the moral relationship between humans and animals, particularly from the perspective of political philosophy. This has involved documenting the neglect or dismissal of the concept of animal rights in the liberal tradition of political thought, defending animal rights from within the liberal tradition and exploring the relationship between animal protection and other political traditions. He is currently embellishing this work by seeking to develop a viable liberal-based theory of justice for animals.

Professor Michael Gilmour, PhD

is Associate Professor of New Testament and English literature at Providence University College in Manitoba, Canada where he regularly teaches a course on animals and the Bible. Among other things, he writes about the reception of the Bible in literature and popular music, returning often to the poetry and lyrics of Bob Dylan. His most recent book, Eden’s Other Residents: The Bible and Animals (Cascade, 2014), offers strategies for reading the prophets in light of contemporary ethical concerns. It also looks for wisdom in later creative writers engaging animal compassion themes, among them William Bartram, Anne Brontë, Woody Guthrie, and Timothy Findley. His current work includes an examination of animals in the writings of C. S. Lewis.

Dr Valéry Giroux, PhD

is the coordinator of the Centre for Research on Ethics (CRE), located at University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada. Dr Giroux is a member of the Quebec Bar and holds a Masters in Law with a thesis on the crimes of animal cruelty in the Canadian Criminal Code. She also holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Université de Montréal with a dissertation on the necessity of granting legal fundamental individual rights to all sentient beings and is affiliated to the Faculty of Law at University of Montreal as Adjunct Professor. Dr Giroux has given several presentations on animal ethics and has taught on the subject. She is also regularly invited in the media to discuss the issues of speciesism, animal rights and veganism. Among her recent publications are “Animals do have an interest in liberty” (Journal of Animal Ethics, 2016) and “Les autres animaux en droit: de la reconnaissance de la sensibilité à l’octroi de la personnalité physique” (Revue du Notariat, 2018), as well as three books: Contre l’exploitation animale (L’Âge d’Homme, 2017), Le Véganisme (coll. “Que sais-je?”, Puf, 2017) and L’Antispécisme (coll. “Que sais-je?”, Puf, 2020). 

Chris Green, JD

is the Executive Director of the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School. He is the former Chair of the American Bar Association’s TIPS Animal Law Committee and previously was the Director of Legislative Affairs for the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Green wrote “The Future of Veterinary Malpractice Liability in the Care of Companion Animals,” which was published in the 10th Anniversary Issue of the journal Animal Law.  That same year he won First Prize at Harvard’s inaugural National Animal Law Competitions, an event he now regularly judges. Chris also recently served on a National Academies of Sciences committee assessing the Dept. of Veterans Affairs’ use of dogs in biomedical research. Chris regularly testifies at legislative hearings on animal protection matters and he has been quoted on animal legal issues in dozens of major media outlets. Green is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Illinois, where he created the college’s first Environmental Science degree. In 2022, Chris received the American Bar Association’s Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Animal Law. 

Caroline Griffin, JD

is a co-founder of the non-profit Show Your Soft Side, an anti-cruelty campaign that works with 250 professional athletes and celebrities throughout the United States. She was appointed Chair of the Mayor’s Anti-Animal Abuse Advisory Commission in Baltimore, following the burning death of a dog, and received the ASPCA Presidential Service Award for her work. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Animal Welfare Institute, a non-profit based in Washington D.C., that works to alleviate the suffering of animals caused by humans. Ms. Griffin graduated from Loyola University of Maryland and the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. She is a member of the Animal Law Commission of the Union Internationale des Avocats and the Animal Law Committee of the American Bar Association. She regularly testifies and writes articles on animal protection and her research interests include deterring youth from engaging in animal cruelty. 

Professor Matthew C. Halteman, PhD

is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Notre Dame, and has published in the fields of 20th century European Philosophy and Animal Ethics. His work in the former discipline has appeared, among other places, in Continental Philosophy Review, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, and The Philosophical Review. In Animal Ethics, Professor Halteman’s research has focused primarily on the importance of moral concern for animals in religious traditions, especially on the spiritual disciplinary prospects of exercising this concern through the daily practice of compassionate eating. His booklet Compassionate Eating as Care of Creation was recently published by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and will serve as an integral component of a new national initiative – HSUS Animals and Religion – that seeks to promote concern for animals among religious audiences. Professor Halteman’s animal ethics and activism course, ‘Peaceable Kingdom: Transforming Our Relationships With Animals’, was recently honoured with the 2007 Animals and Society Course Award for Innovation. His guiding aspiration is to produce work that facilitates fruitful interaction between scholars and activists for the purpose of engendering well-researched, well-argued public education on the moral standing of animals.

Dr Alastair Harden, PhD

works at the Beazley Archive, University of Oxford. He is a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, where he was awarded a first class BA in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History and an MSt in Classical Archaeology. As an undergraduate he received the Fell exhibition at Christ Church, and Oxford University’s Thomas Whitcombe Greene prize for Classical Art and Archaeology. After his BA he spent two years working for pioneering cosmetics company Lush. In 2013 he obtained a PhD in Classics at the University of Reading for a thesis on the iconography of animal skin garments in Archaic Greek art. While a PhD student he authored the chapter on Animals in Classical Art for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Animals in Classical Thought and Life (ed. Gordon Campbell) and completed the sourcebook Animals in the Classical World: Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts for the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics series, published in 2013. His research interests include depictions of animals and half-animals in literature and art from the prehistoric era to the present day, particularly in regard to ethical responses to animal imagery. He hopes to pursue extensive research on the semantics of animal imagery in Classical art, particularly on animals and the articulation of power in Roman public art; he convened the panel The Art History of the Animal for the Association of Art Historians conference in April 2013. He was a founding member of the Oxford University Animal Ethics Society, and has taught at the Universities of Oxford, Reading and Winchester.

Robyn Hederman, JD

is the Principal Court Attorney for a New York State Supreme Court Justice and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She has worked on various publications on behalf of the Animal Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association. She is also a member of the Animal Law Committee of the American Bar Association where she sits on the Animals in Science and Technology Subcommittee. Ms. Hederman has a Master of Arts in History and is a member of the Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society. Her research focuses on the commonalities between animal advocacy and other reform movements in nineteenth-century America. Her publications include “Gender and the Animal Experiments Controversy in Nineteenth-Century America,” in A. Linzey and C. Linzey eds., The Ethical Case Against Animal Experiments (University of Illinois Press, 2018), and “The Cost of Cruelty: Henry Bergh and the Abattoirs” in A. Linzey and C. Linzey eds., Ethical Vegetarianism and Veganism (Routledge, 2018).  

Professor James E. Helmer, PhD

is Assistant Professor of Christian Ethics at Xavier University (USA).  Trained in philosophy and theology, with a doctorate in Christian Ethics from the University of Notre Dame (USA), he specializes in legal and political theory and in issues at the intersections of bioethics (biomedical ethics, neuroethics, and animal ethics) and the law.  His research within the area of animal ethics has focused on questions of animal consciousness and moral standing, animal agency, and the moral and legal rights of non-human animals, and he is presently developing a monograph in this last area.  He frequently teaches an advanced-level undergraduate course in which he engages with students fundamental philosophical and theological questions within the areas of ecological and animal ethics.

Professor Martin Henig, DPhil, DLitt, FSA

is a member of common room and former Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, Oxford, and Honorary Professor at the Institute of Archaeology at University College, London.  He was recently Visiting Lecturer in Roman Art at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. Professor Henig has written numerous books, including: The Art of Roman Britain (new edition 1995), Roman Oxfordshire (2000), Alban and St Albans: Roman and Medieval Architecture, Art and Archaeology (2001), and The Heirs of King Verica: Culture and Politics in Roman Britain (2002). He has also published major catalogues of Roman Sculpture for the British Academy (The Cotswold Region (1993) and North West Midlands (2003) with London and the South East in preparation, and on Roman gems, including with A. MacGregor, Catalogue of the Engraved Gems in the Ashmolean Museum II. Roman (Archaeopress, 2004). From 1985 to 2007, he was Editor of the Journal of the British Archaeological Association, which specialises in Medieval art and architecture. In 2007, he was presented with a Festschrift: Pagans and Christians – from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (edited by Lauren Adams Gilmour) on his 65th birthday. Professor Henig was trained for the ministry at St Stephen’s House, Oxford, and was recently ordained as a priest in the Church of England, and serves in the Osney Benefice in West Oxford. He is Vice-President of the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals.

Professor Kathy Hessler, JD

is a clinical professor of law at Lewis & Clark Law School. She is the first faculty member hired to teach animal law full time in a law school. She received her J.D. from the Marshall-Wythe School of Law at the College of William and Mary and her LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center.  She is the Director of the Animal Law Clinic and the Aquatic Animal Law Initiative, and the faculty advisor for the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund and Animal Law Review at Lewis & Clark. Professor Hessler co-authored Animal Law in a Nutshell, Animal Law – New Perspectives on Teaching Traditional Law, and the amicus brief submitted in the US v. Stevens case, on behalf of 45 law professors who teach animal law.  She has written numerous law review and other articles and teaches and lectures widely across the U.S. and internationally.

Professor Kai Horsthemke, PhD

was educated both in Germany and in South Africa, where he was completed his PhD in the Department of Philosophy, University of the Witwatersrand. After working as a professional musician for several decades, he joined the Wits School of Education in a full-time capacity in 2002. He is an Associate Professor, teaching philosophy of education, ethics, social and political philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of science, logic and critical thinking, all with a strongly educational focus. He has published extensively since 2004, including a book entitled The moral status and rights of animals (Porcupine Press, 2010). Other animal-related publications include ‘Rethinking humane education’ (Ethics and Education 4/2, 2009); ‘Animal liberation: Terrorism or civil disobedience?’ (SA Public Law 27/1, 2012), ‘Animal sacrifice’ (in A. Linzey, ed., The global guide to animal protection (University of Illinois Press, 2013), and ‘Children and other animals: The possibility and promise of animal rights education’ (Philosophy of Education/ Russia 7, 2014: 157-171). Apart from animal rights, his research interests include African philosophy (of education), indigenous knowledge (indigenous science, ethnomathematics, ethnomusicology), as well as humane and environmental education. He has recently published Animals and African Ethics in the Animal Ethics Series for Palgrave MacMillan.

Dr François Jaquet, PhD

is Lecturer in Ethics and the Deputy Director of the Ethics Master at the Université de Strasbourg (France), as well as a statutory member of the Archives Henri Poincaré—Philosophie et Recherches sur les Sciences et les Technologies. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Université de Genève (Switzerland) for a dissertation on the “now-what question” for moral error theorists: what to do with our moral beliefs if they are all false? Since 2019, he has specialized in animal ethics, with a focus on the notion of speciesism. His publications on this topic include “Is Speciesism Wrong by Definition?” (Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 2019), “A Debunking Argument Against Speciesism” (Synthese, 2021), “What’s Wrong with Speciesism” (Journal of Value Inquiry, 2022), “Speciesism and Tribalism: Embarrassing Origins” (Philosophical Studies, 2022), and “Utilitarianism and the Moral Status of Animals: A Psychological Perspective” (Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 2022, with Manon Gouiran and Florian Cova). He is currently writing a monograph (in French) on the ontology and ethics of speciesism, which will address such questions as: What exactly is speciesism? Does speciesism really exist? Is speciesism morally acceptable? 

Dr Linda Johnson, PhD

teaches art history in the Department of Visual Arts at University of Michigan-Flint. She completed her PhD in American Studies from Michigan State University. Her dissertation, Spiritual Autobiography in Puritan Portraiture, embraced the fields of European and American art, and religion. Once a curatorial fellow at Historic Deerfield, she has held internships at Michigan State’s Graduate Museum Program where she published essays for MSGS, Michigan Stained Glass Census, a statewide survey of architectural stained glass. Recent publications include, “Increase Mather: A Pre-Millennial Portrait during the Revocation of the Massachusetts Charter” in American Literature and the New Puritan Studies, edited by Carla Mulford and Bryce Traister (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Her research explores the intersections between art, animals, and religious discourse within the development of new scientific inquiry in the early modern period (1600-1815). Recent papers include “Fur and Fashion: Ethical Decisions in Puritan Dress” in Eco-Critical Theory and Practice (forthcoming). Her future projects are devoted to exploring the complexities of the human-animal relationship in European and American Art in which she plans on making a significant contribution to the field of art history, religion, and the environmental humanities.

Professor Shannon Johnstone

is a tenured Professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, NC. She is also a PhD candidate in Human-Animal Studies at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand where she is studying the role of images of animal suffering. Her photographic work deals with themes that reclaim what has been discarded and make visible that which is hidden. Johnstone has had solo shows in Chicago, Rochester, New Orleans, Raleigh, and Durham. Her photography has been featured in group exhibitions throughout the USA, and internationally in China, Germany, France, Taiwan, and Thailand. She has been a Photolucida Critical Mass Finalist six times (2017, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2010, 2009), and is the recipient of three Creativity Grants from the Culture & Animals Foundation (2023, 2019, 2014). Her project “Landfill Dogs”was most notably on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer (2013), and CNN.com (2014). Her newest work “Roadside Zoo” won an Honorable Mention in the International Photography Awards (2021).

Dr Paul J. Kirbas, DMin, PhD

is President and CEO of The Graduate Theological Foundation (GTF), and the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology and Culture at GTF. He earned his M.Div and D.Min at Columbia Seminary, and was ordained as a Minister in the Presbyterian Church USA in 1988. Paul earned his PhD in Theological Studies from the Graduate Theological Foundation in 2007, focusing on the Theology of Nature. For many years, Paul was a Guest Professor of Theology at Wheaton College. In 2010, The Kirbas Institute was created, to support Paul’s work in building bridges between religion and science on important matters of the environment and animal ethics. He is the editor of This Sacred Earth (Wyndham Hall Press, 2011),  author of Navigating Through a Stipulated Freedom (Wyndham Hall Press, 2010) host of the TV program Animals in the Kingdom, and creator of the curriculum (book, workbook, video series) Sacred Place, Sacred Role.

Dr Tal Kogman, PhD

is a Senior Instructor in the MA Program in Child and Youth Culture Research, The Shirley & Leslie Porter School of Cultural Studies, at Tel Aviv University. Her fields of specialization are child and youth culture, the history of Jewish education in modernity, Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), modern Ashkenazic popular science and textbooks, and human-animal studies. Since 2004, Dr. Kogman has taught courses at Tel Aviv University dealing with human-animal relations and children’s culture. For the last four years, she has also taught a course in the Unit for Social Involvement at Tel Aviv University, which combines academic learning with social activities (the students contribute to organizations that educate children in the field of animal welfare). In several of her publications, Dr. Kogman has dealt with animal representations in 18th and 19th century Hebrew texts for children that were published in Europe. Moreover, in 2016 she edited a special issue on “Animals in Children’s Culture” in Animals and Society – The Israeli Journal for the Human-Animal Bond (in Hebrew).

Dr Catharine E. Krebs, PhD

is a medical research specialist at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a US-based organization that promotes nonanimal research and medical training. She received doctoral biomedical research training in human genetics with a focus on psychiatric disease genetics and genomics from the University of California Los Angeles. Her work in animal research policy involves advocating for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to shift away from its reliance on animals toward more ethical, equitable, and effective human-specific research approaches. She also advocates for policy changes to promote a more diverse and inclusive research workforce. Dr. Krebs has authored numerous US Congressional statements and public comments to the NIH and other federal agencies. She leads a collaborative international effort to characterize and address the bias toward animal-based methods within biomedical research. Dr. Krebs has been an invited speaker at national and international meetings to provide expertise on research policy and advancing nonanimal research approaches. 

Camille Labchuk

is an animal rights lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice—Canada’s only animal law advocacy organization. Under her leadership, Animal Justice fights legal cases in courtrooms across the country, works to pass groundbreaking new laws, and ensures industries are held accountable for illegal animal cruelty. Camille has litigated to advance animals’ legal interests at all levels of court, including before the Supreme Court of Canada. She regularly testifies before legislative committees, and was instrumental in passing a precedent-setting national ban on whale and dolphin captivity in 2019. She has filed false advertising complaints against companies making misleading humane claims; documented Canada’s commercial seal slaughter, and exposed hidden suffering behind the closed doors of farms and zoos through undercover investigations. Camille also regularly defends and protects the rights of animal advocates. Camille was previously a founding board member of Mercy For Animals Canada, press secretary to the leader of a federal Canadian political party, and has been a two-time candidate for Parliament. Camille is a frequent lecturer on animal law, co-host of the Paw & Order podcast, and a regular contributor to national publications like the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star. She authored a chapter about false advertising law and animal protection in Canadian Perspectives on Animals and the Law (2015), and a chapter on legal protections for ethical vegans in a forthcoming edited collection. Her current research focuses on the creeping privatization of animal law and enforcement, and federalism and animal law.

Professor Jodi Lazare, DCL

is an Associate Professor at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, where she teaches Animal Law. She holds degrees in both civil law and common law from the University of Ottawa and a Master of Laws and Doctor of Civil Law from McGill University. Prior to joining Dalhousie, she worked as a law clerk to the Honourable Justice Michael J. Moldaver at the Supreme Court of Canada. Her work in animal law focuses on the law’s treatment of companion animals upon family breakdown and the constitutional dimensions of laws aimed at suppressing animal rights activism in Canada. That work, which maintains that the ethics of animal rights activism and related practices are constitutionally protected activity, appears in the Alberta Law Review and the Osgoode Hall Law Review. Her current work uncovers and examines the exceptional treatment of animal agriculture by law and policymakers through legislation aimed at punishing animal rights activists and the disproportionate use of public funds and resources that directly and indirectly function to protect and promote animal agriculture. She has given expert testimony before provincial and federal legislative committees studying proposed legislation to protect animal agriculture and has appeared in popular media, including the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, and the Chronicle Herald. 

Professor Chien-hui Li, PhD

is a Professor in History at the Department of History at National Cheng Kung University. She received her MPhil and PhD degrees from King’s College, University of Cambridge in the UK and was formerly a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and an Assistant Professor at Fu Jen Catholic University. Her research and teaching interests include Modern British History, History of Social Movements, Animal History and Western Historiography. She has published widely in journals such as Society and Animals, Journal of Animal Ethics, The New History, Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, EurAmerica: A Journal of European and American Studies, Historical Inquiry, Cheng Kung Journal of Historical Studies, Chinese Studies in History, and World History Review. She has also co-edited and introduced William Drummond’s Rights of Animals and Man’s Obligation to Treat Them with Humanity (1838) for the Mellen Animal Rights Library with Rod Preece and translated Andrew Linzey’s Animal Gospel for the China University Press of Politics and Law in 2005 and the Yong Wang Press in 2006. She has also helped to organize Special Issues on “Animal Studies” and “Animal History” for Chung Wai Literary Quarterly and Cheng Kung Journal of Historical Studies in 2003 and 2020, respectively. Her most recent work, Mobilizing Traditions in the Frist Wave of the Animal Defense Movement in Britain, published in the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, won the 2020 Academia Sinica Scholarly Monograph Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Taiwan. She is currently engaged in research on the lives of farmed animals in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain.

Dr Randall Lockwood, PhD

is Senior Vice President for Forensic Sciences and Anti-Cruelty Projects of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) a post he has held since 2005. He has degrees in psychology and biology from Wesleyan University in Connecticut and a doctorate in psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. He was Assistant Professor in the psychology departments of the State University of New York at Stony Brook and Washington University. He joined the staff of the Humane Society of the United States in 1984 where he held a variety of positions including Vice President for Research and Educational Outreach. His professional work has included ethological studies of wolves, the health benefits of keeping companion animals and the psychology of kindness and cruelty to animals. He has facilitated hundreds of workshops to coordinate the formation of coalitions against violence that seek to bring together the resources of professionals in diverse fields. His efforts to increase awareness of the connection between animal abuse and other forms of violence were profiled in the 1999 BBC documentary “The Cruelty Connection”. He has served on the Boards of Directors of several groups including the Center for Respect for Life and Environment, Defenders of Wildlife, the William and Charlotte Parks Foundation for Animal Welfare and the International Veterinary Forensic Sciences Association.

Dr Lockwood co-edited  Cruelty to Animals and Interpersonal Violence (Purdue University Press, 1998), and co-authored Forensic Investigation of Animal Cruelty: A Guide for Veterinary and Law Enforcement Professionals (Humane Society Press, 2006). He also authored Prosecuting Animal Cruelty Cases: Opportunities for Early Response to Crime and Interpersonal Violence (ASPCA, 2006) published by the American Prosecutors Research Institute, and Dogfighting Toolkit for Law Enforcement: Addressing Dogfighting in Your Community (2011), published by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Professor Daniel B. Lourenço, PhD

is Professor of Law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ where he teaches Environmental Law, Environmental Ethics, and coordinates the Centre of Environmental Ethics (UFRJ/UFF). He also teaches Law at IBMEC/RJ and at the Post-Graduation Law Program at UniFG/BA where he teaches Ethics and the Theory of Law. At UniFG he is the founder of the Centre for Animal Ethics – ANDIRA. He is a Visiting Professor at the Brazil-American Institute for Law and the Environment (BAILE) at Pace Law School and is a member of the FGV Law Program. His research and teaching interests include the history of human-animal relations, animal ethics, environmental ethics, and western environmental historiography. He received his PhD from UNESA/RJ (cum laude) in a research entitled “What is the value of nature?” He is currently in the process of completing a book based on his doctoral thesis that is published by Editora Elefante (2019). His Master of Law degree at UGF/RJ included a dissertation on the foundation of animal rights and has become a book entitled Animal Rights: Current debates and new perspectives (Fabris, 2008).

Professor Philip Lymbery

is Global Chief Executive of the international farmed animal welfare environmental organisation, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF). He is Visiting Professor at the University of Winchester in the UK, a Leadership Fellow of St George’s House, Windsor Castle, and President of Eurogroup for Animals, the Brussels-based umbrella body of 80 leading animal welfare societies in Europe. He was appointed UN ambassadorial ‘Champion’ for the 2021 Food Systems Summit in New York. Lymbery is an animal advocate, naturalist, photographer, and author. He regularly writes and speaks internationally on animal ethics and the global effects of industrial agriculture (factory farming), including its impact on animal welfare, wildlife, soil and natural resources, biodiversity and climate change. His most recent books include Farmageddon: The True Cost of Cheap Meat (Bloomsbury, 2014), Dead Zone: Where the Wild Things Were (Bloomsbury, 2017), and Sixty Harvests Left: How to Reach a Nature-friendly Future (Bloomsbury, 2022). 

Professor Randy Malamud, PhD

is Regent’s Professor of English at Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA. He gained his BA in English at the University of Pennsylvania, and his MA, MPhil, and PhD degrees in Literature from Columbia University. His doctoral dissertation (1989) was on “The Language of Modernism”. He is the author of Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (Macmillan and NYU Press, 1998) and Poetic Animals and Animal Souls (Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), and the editor of A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern Age (Berg, 2007). He serves on the editorial boards of Society & Animals and Brill’s Human-Animal Studies book series. He is also an International Associate of the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, University of Canterbury. In addition to his scholarship, he has had numerous appearances in popular media on the topic of animals; many of these are linked from his webpage. His interests include, generally, anthrozoology, and more specifically, zoos; cultural representations of animals; ecology, eco-criticism and environmentalism; and cinematic figurations of animals. He is a Patron of the Captive Animals’ Protection Society (UK).

Professor Justin Marceau, JD

is a professor of law and endowed research scholar at the University of Denver, Sturm College of Law.  He specialises in criminal law, constitutional law and animal law.  He teaches a variety of courses in animal law, and has published in leading U.S. academic journals on the topic.  Marceau is the author of Beyond Cages (Cambridge, 2018), which criticizes the use of prisons and carceral methods as a way of pursuing animal protection.  He also actively litigates cases for the animal protection movement, including playing a leading role in the Ag-Gag litigation in the U.S.  Before joining the law faculty Marceau studied philosophy at Boston College and earned his law degree from Harvard Law School.

Dr Lori Marino, PhD

is a Comparative Neuroscientist formerly on the Faculty of Emory University in Atlanta.  She is founder and Executive Director of The Kimmela Center for Animal Advocacy and President of the Whale Sanctuary Project. Lori’s work focuses on the evolution of the brain and intelligence in cetaceans and other mammals, e.g. primates. She is the Science Lead for The Someone Project, a joint Farm Sanctuary-Kimmela research-based initiative documenting farmed animal cognition, emotions, and social complexity through science. She also served as the Science Director for the Nonhuman Rights Project for two years. Lori has published over 140 peer-reviewed papers, chapters, and articles on cetacean neuroanatomy and cognition, self-awareness, human-nonhuman relationships, and the impacts of captivity on animals in zoos and marine parks. In 2001, she co-authored a ground-breaking study offering the first conclusive evidence for mirror self-recognition in bottlenose dolphins, after which she chose to discontinue work with captive animals. Recently, she has authored several chapters and articles on the ethics of animal experimentation and use for entertainment, as well as on the denial of death and our relationships with other animals.

Professor Patricia McEachern, PhD

is the Dorothy Jo Barker Endowed Professor of Animal Rights at Drury University and the Director of the Drury University Forum on Animal Rights. In 2012, she established an innovative minor in Animal Studies at the undergraduate level. She directs and participates in a one-of-a kind course on Animal Ethics taught by a team of eight professors, all experts in their prospective fields. In addition, she teaches courses on Animals in Literature and on Animals and Contemporary Issues. While pursuing her doctorate in French literature at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she spent a year as an exchange student at the École Normale Supérieure, rue d’Ulm in Paris. Dr McEachern has published two books, Deprivation and Power: Eating Disorders in Nineteenth-Century French Literature (Greenwood, 1998) and A Holy Life: The Writings of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes (Ignatius, 2005). In 2007, Bob Barker, a long-time advocate for animals, began providing resources that have allowed Dr McEachern to change the direction of her professional interests. She now devotes herself full-time to the study of animal rights. Dr McEachern takes a particular interest in elephants in captivity.

The Revd Professor Adrian Anthony McFarlane, PhD

is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary (Master of Divinity) and Drew University (MPhil, PhD). He did his doctoral dissertation on the inter-connections between Edmund Husserl’s phenomenological analyses of experience and meaning and Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Ordinary Language analyses of language use and context. Professor McFarlane later revised and published his dissertation under the title: A Grammar of Fear and Evil: A Husserlian-Wittgensteinian Hermeneutic (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 1996). In addition to numerous articles and invited papers, Professor McFarlane co-edited (with S. Murrell and D. Spencer) a bestselling university textbook on the Rastafarian Movement: Chanting Down Babylon-The Rastafarian Reader (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1997). Arising from this publication, he has spoken at over seventeen university campuses and academic conferences dealing with African retentions in Caribbean religions. His recent essay “A Rastafarian Hermeneutic of Animal Care” will be published in the forthcoming  Handbook of Religion and Animal Protection. Professor McFarlane taught philosophy, epistemology/metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language and philosophy of religion at universities in the USA and the Caribbean, in addition to visiting lectures at numerous colleges, including Wooster, Union, Rider, and Denison University. Professor McFarlane was an invited Visiting Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford University in 1999. He has been the Vice President of the International University of the Caribbean (Montego Bay, Jamaica) since 2006.

Professor Steven McMullen, PhD

is an assistant professor of economics at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research has focused on labor economics and education policy, ethics, and theology. His writing about animal ethics has focused on the place of animals in the economy and the integration of ethics with economic analysis.  He is currently working on a book titled Animals and Economics which will be included in the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series (A. Linzey & P. Cohn, Eds.). This volume explores the central role of economic institutions and policy in determining the place of animals in the economy, and calls for large-scale change in the legal standing of animals. He has also explored animal issues in his work on virtue ethics and in his writing on environmental ethics and property law. His education policy research has focused on homework time and school calendars, and has appeared in several economics journals, including the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy and Economics of Education Review.

Dr Les Mitchell, PhD

is the Director of the Hunterstoun Centre of the University of Fort Hare, South Africa. He gained a doctorate at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, for his dissertation on ‘Discourses and the Oppression of Non-human Animals: A Critical Realist Account’. He has worked in Pathology, Community Health and Education in the U.K., Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, and South Africa where he taught sciences in a township school in Grahamstown. His Masters dissertation at the University of Malawi is titled ‘The Relevance of the Malawian MSCE Science Syllabus to the Lives of Young Malawians’. He gives talks at schools and has made a number of presentations at Rhodes University, where he is a member of the Ethics Committee, and at the Ethics Society of South Africa, as well as publishing ‘Animals and the Discourse of Farming in Southern Africa’ in Society and Animals, Vol. 14, No.1, 2006, 39-59 and ‘Moral Disengagement and Support for Nonhuman Animal Farming’ (forthcoming). He recently organized the Hunterstoun Symposium on Nonhuman Animals, the first of its kind in Southern Africa. His research interests are critical realism, non-human animals, discourses, power in society, genocide, moral disengagement, and alternatives to violence.

Kimberly Moore

is a Senior Attorney at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP in Washington, D.C., where she specializes in federal income tax law, private equity investments and public private partnerships and where she is a national expert on tax advantaged affordable housing programs.  She is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where she served as Managing Editor of the Virginia Tax Return, and received an elite LLM degree from New York University in Taxation.  She is an active member of the D.C. Bar, an associate member of the Virginia State Bar and a member of the Animal Law Committee of the American Bar Association.  She is the Director of Public Relations for Fur Free Society, Inc. and has worked on state legislation to ban the sale and manufacture of fur.  She has also represented and advised animal welfare organizations on formation and fundraising matters, has assisted organizations in obtaining their I.R.S. 501(c)(3) status and helped an international animal sanctuary set up a “friends of” charitable organization in the United States.  She participates in podcast and radio interviews and is a frequent speaker at conferences on issues associated with the treatment of animals and has sponsored conferences to advance the legal status of animals.  In 2018, she gave the keynote address at the Fifth Annual Oxford Animal Ethics Summer School on Animal Ethics and the Law (Creating Positive Change for Animals) on why laws matter for animals.  Her research projects include a critique of the marketing of fur by the fur industry as “green” and “eco-friendly,” the impact of fur farming on the environment, and the marketing of fur to children. Her research interests include improving the legal status of animals and exploring the use of established public private partnership paradigms to improve the lives of animals on factory farms.  Kimberly is the author of The Case for the Legal Protection of Animals, Humanity’s Shared Destiny with the Animal Kingdom (Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series, 2023).   

Dr Carlos M. Naconecy, PhD

is a Brazil-based philosopher, independent researcher and author.  He is also Director of the Animal Ethics Department of the Brazilian Vegetarian Society. Naconecy holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. His thesis topic was ‘The Life Ethic: Moral Biocentrism and the Concept of Bio-Respect’. Previously, he gained a Master of Philosophy degree at the same university with a thesis on contemporary environmental ethics, and a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) which included a dissertation on the moral status of the non-human animals. In 2006, he obtained a grant from the Brazilian governmental funding agency to become a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge, UK. Naconecy has present papers at academic conferences in Brazil, Peru, Portugal and Cambridge. In addition to his scholarship, he has numerous appearances in popular media on the topic of applied ethics in Brazil. His publications include a book (in Portuguese) titled Ethics and Animals: a guide to the philosophical arguments (Porto Alegre: Edipucrs, 2006). Research interests include animal ethics and environmental ethics.

Dr Yamini Narayanan, PhD

is an Australian Research Council DECRA Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne. Her research has two major foci: one, the nexus between animals and urban planning, and conceptualising frameworks for multispecies-inclusive planning; and two, the implications of India’s cow protectionism discourse, politics and legislations, for the cows and indeed, the animal advocacy movement in India itself. Her work is combines scholarship and advocacy, and she is co-opted member of the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) of the Ministry of Environment, Forest, and Climate Change, Government of India, and an Advisory Board Member of the Visakha Society for the Protection and Care of Animals, India. Yamini also serves as the Treasurer of the Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA). Her work on animals and development has been published in leading journals including Environment and Planning D, Society and Animals, and Sustainable Development. Her book Religion, Heritage and the Sustainable City: Hinduism and Urbanisation in Jaipur (Routledge) was published in 2015, and an edited volume Religion and Urbanism: Reconceptualising Sustainable Cities in South Asia (Routledge) was published in 2016. Her forthcoming book will offer one of the first empirical critiques of India’s cow protectionism discourse and politics from a critical animal studies standpoint, by examining bovine realities in both sites of production and protection.

Dr Christina Nellist, PhD

is an Eastern Orthodox theologian specializing in animal suffering and human soteriology. She is a former Visiting Research Fellow at Winchester University; Guest Lecturer on Veterinary Ethics at Chile’s Iberia-America University and advisor to the Government, receiving an award for her work on stray-dog control via public health education. She is Co-Founder and Editor of Pan-Orthodox Concern for Animals; Board member of the Animal Interfaith Alliance; Educational Consultant and teacher in the Sciences and Special Education. Her publications include Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Animal Suffering: Ancient Voices in Modern Theology (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2018/2020) and articles on animal suffering in the Greek Orthodox Theological Review; Journal of Eastern Orthodox Theology, The Ark, Green Christian and Sarx magazines. Her present initiative is editing a book on ‘Climate Crisis & Creation Care: Eco-Economic Sustainability, Ecological Integrity and Justice’ (2021). Her ‘Creation Care: Christian Responsibility Course’ is available on her charity’s website.

Professor Nathan Nobis, PhD

is a Professor of Philosophy at Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA, USA. He is the author of the open-access introductory textbook Animals & Ethics 101: Thinking Critically About Animal Rights, co-author of Thinking Critically About Abortion, a co-author of Chimpanzee Rights, and the author or co-author of many other articles, chapters and other materials on ethics and animals and other philosophical issues, including “A Moral Argument for Veganism” and “The Harmful, Nontherapeutic Use of Animals in Research Is Morally Wrong.”  He also serves as Lead Editor of 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology. He also creates educational videos for TikTok and YouTube. His general goal is to develop materials to help people more effectively engage controversial ethical and philosophical issues.  

Professor Julie O’Connor, PhD

has been a teacher and instructional supervisor for over twenty five years in both the New York City and New Jersey public school systems. She is an Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of Education at Touro University. She received Master’s degrees from both Mercy College and The Bank Street College of Education, and her PhD in Education from Northcentral University. Specializing in English language learning, Dr. O’Connor obtained her PhD by studying how humane education, prosocial learning that includes kindness to animals, improves student education. She has presented on humane education at numerous conferences. Publications include the peer reviewed study entitled “Humane Education’s Effect on Middle School Student Motivation and Standards-Based Reading Assessment,” and the non-fiction book United States of Friendship: Pen Pals of 9/11. Dr. O’Connor currently serves as the Educational Director for the Animal Protection League of New Jersey, and is the founder and director of Caring Activists Against Fur. She is also the Vice President of The Humane Education Committee, Inc. 

Dr Maureen O’Sullivan, PhD

is a lecturer in law (Above the Bar) at the School of Law at the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) where she specialises in industrial and intellectual property law, animal rights law and legal issues related to veganism and vegetarianism. She completed a Ph.D. at the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh in 2017 and published a monograph entitled “Biotechnology, Patents and Morality: A Deliberative and Participatory Paradigm for Reform” with Routledge in 2019. To date she has supervised several Ph.D. students to completion in animal law, land law and patents and biotechnology. She holds a Research LL.M. from the University of Warwick and studied her B.C.L. and B.A. (Philosophy and English) at University College Cork. She previously taught at the University of the West of England, Bristol and at Warwick University. Maureen was Chairperson of the Vegetarian Society of Ireland from 2013-9, secretary from 2012-2013 and has been a fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics since 2014. She speaks fluent Spanish. She became vegetarian at the age of 12 and vegan at 20. Recently she has published articles on vegetarian and vegan rights in the European Human Rights Law Review and for the legal network of the UK Vegan Society. She is currently writing a book on the history of vegetarianism and veganism in Ireland and is editing a book entitled “Animals in Ireland.”

Professor Kay Peggs, PhD

is Professor of Sociology at Kingston University, London and Visiting Fellow at the University of Portsmouth. Professor Peggs has longstanding research interests in critical sociology and social theory. Her current research addresses the persistence of complex inequalities associated with species. The subject of human relationships with nonhuman animals is often neglected in sociology and she has produced a series of publications and conference presentations on this theme, including her book Animals and Sociology, which was published in 2012 in the Palgrave Macmillan Series on Animal Ethics. At the University of Portsmouth she led the research project Veganism: Ethics and Lifestyle. Forthcoming publications in the field include Experiments, Animal Bodies and Human Values (Routledge, forthcoming) and the co-authored Consuming Animals: Ethics, Environment and Lifestyle Choices (Routledge, forthcoming). Professor Peggs is also a social research methods specialist. She is co-editor of two major four volume sets, Observation Methods (SAGE, 2013) and Critical Social Research Ethics (SAGE, 2018). 

Martina Pluda, JD

is the first Director for Italy of international animal protection organization Humane Society International and has been holding this position since early 2020. She a professional animal advocate with a media and legal background. Before her current, she worked for several years as Head of Programmes and Interim Country Director at FOUR PAWS in Vienna, Austria. For almost a decade, Martina has been successfully running legislative, corporate, and awareness campaigns to improve the legal protection of farm, companion, and wild animals, influence company policies and practices, change the public perception around pressing animal protection issues, and encourage plant-based and cruelty-free options. By exposing hidden animal suffering and offering concrete solutions, Martina strives to achieve meaningful, long-term structural and societal change. Her work includes campaigning against cruel farming practices, fur fashion, dog fighting, animal testing, trophy hunting, and more. In recent years, her policy work has directly contributed to obtaining a ban on fur farming in Italy (2021/22) and to the submission of the first bill to prohibit the import of hunting trophies of CITES-listed species to Italy (2022/23). Martina holds both a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) and a Juris Doctor (JD) from the University of Salzburg, as well as a Master’s in Animal Law from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Martina has been working for over fifteen years as a free-lance journalist and is the author of Animal Law in the Third Reich (Servei de Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2019). She is also a frequent conference speaker, a regular op-ed contributor and media commentator on animal protection issues, and her work has been featured in numerous news outlets, nationally and internationally.  

Dr Pandora Pound, PhD

is Research Director at Safer Medicines Trust, a charity that aims to improve the safety of medicines by facilitating a transition to human biology-based drug development and testing. She has a PhD in the Sociology of Medicine and over two decades’ experience of conducting research. In 2004, she transformed the debate on animal experiments as lead author of a landmark paper published in the British Medical Journal which led to a series of systematic reviews that ultimately exposed the scientific limitations of using animals in medical research. She has written numerous academic papers on the scientific drawbacks of using animals as models for humans, as well as commissioned articles, book chapters and blogs. In her forthcoming popular science book, Rat Trap (Matador, 2023), she comprehensively dismantles the case for animal research and showcases the awe-inspiring technologies that will bypass animals and revolutionise medicine once we escape the stranglehold of the current paradigm. 

Dr Simon Pulleyn, DPhil, FRHistS

read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford in the 1980s and took a doctorate in the field of ancient Greek religion. He has published numerous articles and reviews about Greek and Latin language and literature. He has written two books: a monograph entitled Prayer in Greek Religion (OUP, 1997) and an edition with commentary of Homer, Iliad Book I (OUP, 2000). Having taught Classics in the University of Oxford for about ten years, he studied law, qualified as a solicitor and practised in the City of London for five years. He then turned to teaching academic law and has written articles about legal history, land law and the law of charities. He then decided to bring together his interests in history, languages, law and religion by taking a master’s degree in Canon Law at the University of Cardiff. His dissertation, supervised by Professor Norman Doe, concentrated on the exemptions granted to monastic houses from the general canon law in medieval Europe from the earliest times to the Reformation. He presented a paper on Animals in Western Christian Canon Law at the first Annual Oxford Animal Ethics Summer School on Religion and Animal Protection in July 2014. This is due to be published in the forthcoming Handbook of Religion and Animal Protection. Simon is interested in the ways in which historical studies can not only throw light on the past but also explain why people think and act towards animals as they do today.

Professor Kurt Remele, Dr theol

is Associate Professor for Ethics and Social Thought in the Department of Catholic Theology at Karl-Franzens-University in Graz, Austria, where he has taught since 1992. He was a lecturer at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany (1984-90), a Fulbright Scholar at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. (2003), a Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota (2007) and in the Department of Religious Studies at Gonzaga University, Spokane, USA (academic year 2011/12). His doctoral dissertation dealt with the ethics of civil disobedience (Ziviler Ungehorsam. Aschendorff, 1992), his post-doctoral dissertation (Habilitation) examined the relation of therapeutic self-actualization to the common good (Tanz um das goldene Selbst? Styria, 2001). For a considerable time his research interests have also focused on animal ethics.  He is particularly interested in the contribution of various religions to animal protection (cf. his chapter in the book Tierrechte. Eine interdisziplinaere Herausforderung, Harald Fischer, 2007), in particular the ambivalent tradition of the Roman Catholic Church (cf. his chapter in the book Tier – Mensch – Ethik, LIT 2011). He taught courses on animal ethics and animal theology both in Austria and the USA and has voiced his concern for animals in numerous lectures and newspaper articles, on the radio and on TV.

Professor David B. Rosengard, JD

is a managing attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, where he engages with criminal justice stakeholders to protect the lives and improve the legal position of animals. In this context, he has a focus on jurisprudence, translating theory into practice, and situating animals as individuals with legally cognizable interests separate from those of the state and defendants – animal victims’ rights, by any other name. David is an adjunct professor of animal law at Lewis & Clark Law School, from which he received his JD and Animal Law LLM. He regularly guest lectures for academic and practitioner audiences within the USA and internationally. In addition to authoring various amicus briefs and law review articles, David is a co-editor of Animal Law in A Nutshell (second edition), a contributing author to Animal Cruelty Investigations: A Collaborative Approach from Victim to Verdict, and a co-editor and contributing author of Animals As Crime Victims. 

Professor John Rossi, VMD

is Assistant Professor at the Drexel University School of Public Health in Philadelphia. He completed his doctorate in veterinary medicine and master’s degree in bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches and writes about a number of issues relating to the history and ethics of public health, medicine and science more broadly. Dr Rossi has previously served as a Commissioner’s Fellow at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and he also spent numerous years in veterinary clinical practice. Dr Rossi’s interest in animal ethics is wide-ranging, and includes the moral standing of animals, the ethics of animal agriculture and animal research, issues relating to the conceptualization and scientific assessment of animal welfare, the ethics of selective breeding, and veterinary medical ethics. As well, Dr Rossi writes about the ethics of human research, public health ethics, and the ethical dimensions of autism. He has authored numerous book chapters and peer-reviewed articles, with his work appearing in The Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, The Journal of Medical Ethics, The Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, Public Health Ethics, The Encyclopedia of Global Bioethics, and The Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics.

Dr Philip Sampson, PhD

originally studied mathematical physics but retrained following sociological research at the University of Sussex. He completed his PhD on discourse and change in late modernity at the University of Southampton, and undertook psychotherapy training. He thereafter worked both as a family therapist, and in social science research. He held a Research Fellowship at the University of Southampton, and has taught courses at theological colleges in the UK. He has lectured at universities in the UK and China, and at Regent College, Canada. He gave a keynote address on Postmodernity at the 1993 Leaders Conference of the Lausanne Movement, and co-edited the proceedings, published as Faith and Modernity (Regnum, 1994). His articles, papers and journalism have appeared in a variety of publications including Faith and Thought, Third Way, and Kunstforum International, as well as on-line; a selection may be found on his page on Academia.edu. His Six Modern Myths (IVP, 2000) included discussion of the transformation of animal theology in modernity. His research since has focussed on the archeology of evangelical Christian discourses about animals, and his articles on this have appeared in Third Way, The Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics and elsewhere. Dr Sampson has contributed a chapter on “Humans, Animals and Others”  in C. Falke (ed),  Intersections in Christianity and Critical Theory (Palgrave, 2010); and to A. Linzey and C. Linzey (eds),  A Handbook of Religion and Animal Protection (forthcoming). He is currently writing A Passion for Kindness, a book exploring the evangelical contribution to animal advocacy in the UK from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

Dr Edel Sanders, PhD

is Head of Research for the School of Psychology at the University of New York in Prague. For nearly nine years, she was Dean of Psychology at the same university. She has taught a plethora of courses in higher education with a passion to inspire meaningful learning. Her journey to explore the workings of the developing mind began at Columbia University where she earned three degrees (BA, summa cum laude, MA and EdM), followed by a PhD at the University of Cambridge. Though Dr Sanders’ doctoral thesis explored cognitive development in human children, while at Cambridge she also supported research at the Comparative Cognition lab, investigating individual traits and social learning in the natural environment of wild jackdaws as her fascination of the mind extended beyond the human mind to include the minds of other species. One area of focus in her recent publications regards concepts of otherness. She hopes to extend the discourse with the goal to dissolve mental biases and barriers regarding other species as well as human others. Her published works also regard post-traumatic stress and growth. Future projects and research are motivated by the desire to foster compassion towards animals through humane education in urban areas and refugee settlements, which also can encourage healing and growth in those who have experienced trauma. Beyond this, Dr Sanders hopes to spark the idea that animals have intrinsic value and interests like our own through books and motivational talks, such as her recent TedTalk revealing how human hubris can blind us to the wonders of the inner worlds of nonhuman animals’ hearts and minds. 

Professor Joan E. Schaffner, JD

is an Associate Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School. Ze received zir B.S. in mechanical engineering (magna cum laude) and J.D. (Order of the Coif) from the University of Southern California and zir M.S. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Prof. Schaffner teaches Civil Procedure, Sexuality and the Law, Remedies, and Legislation and Regulation. Ze is the editor-in-chief of the American Intellectual Property Law Association Quarterly Journal and is the faculty advisor to Lambda Law and the GW Student Animal Legal Defense Fund.

Prof. Schaffner’s current scholarship focuses on animal protection law. Ze has presented on animal law panels and conferences world-wide. Joan’s most recent work has focused on the compassionate management of free-roaming cats. Ze has presented on the legal implications of community cat management at the Canadian Bar Association Professional Development Joint Conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada, at the National Animal Care and Control Association Training Conference, American Bar Association Shelter Law Symposium, in Virginia Beach, VA, and at the Illinois State Bar, Animal Law Conference in Carbondale, Illinois. Zir publications on this topic include the 2019 article “The Road to TNR: Examining Trap-Neuter-Return Through the Lens of Our Evolving Ethics,” co-authored with Peter Wolf, the review article “Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Dangerous Book,” published in September 2018 in the Journal of Animal Ethics and the article “Community Cats: Changing the Legal Paradigm for So-Called ‘Pests’” published in March 2017 in the Syracuse Law Review.  Further, ze is the author of Introduction to Animals and the Law, co-author and editor of A Lawyer’s Guide to Dangerous Dog Issues and Litigating Animal Law Disputes: A Complete Guide for Lawyers, and author of several book chapters including “Valuing Nature in Environmental Law: Lessons for Animal Law and the Valuation of Animals” in What Can Animal Law Learn from Environmental Law? (2d ed.), “Evolving Perspectives on Captive Wild Animals” in Wildlife Law and Ethics: A U.S. Perspective, “Blackfish and Public Outcry: A Unique Political and Legal Opportunity for Fundamental Change to the Legal Protection of Marine Mammals in the United States” in Animal Law and Welfare: International Perspectives; and “Animal Cruelty and the Law: Permitted Conduct” in Animal Cruelty: A Multidisciplinary Approach (2d ed.).

Prof. Schaffner is Past Chair and Newsletter Vice-Chair, American Bar Association (ABA) Tort Trial & Insurance Practice Section (TIPS) Animal Law Committee; Founding Chair of the American Association of Law Schools (AALS) Section on Animal Law; and Fellow, Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. In 2019, Joan received the ABA TIPS Andrew C. Hecker Memorial Award. In 2018, ze received the Excellence in Animal Law Award: Scholarship-Teaching-Service, from the AALS Animal Law Section, and in 2013, ze received the ABA TIPS Excellence in the Advancement of Animal Law Award. Joan was selected in 2017 as a Fellow to the American Bar Foundation. Prof. Schaffner shares zir life with a magnificent group of felines.

Professor Edward C. Sellner, PhD

is Professor of Pastoral Theology and Spirituality at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he has taught graduate and undergraduate students for over thirty years, and administered pastoral ministry, spiritual direction, and master’s degree programmes.  He was also instrumental in founding the Wisdom Ways Spirituality Resource Center in St. Paul and was national chairperson of the National Association for Lay Ministry from 1986-1988. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, and a former chemical dependency counseller, he did his post-doctoral work at the St. Theosevia Centre of Christian Spirituality in Oxford, England, in the fall of 1988, when he also taught at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth, Ireland.  Dr  Sellner is the author of numerous articles and twelve books, including Christian Ministry and the Fifth Step (Hazelden Foundation, 1981), Mentoring: the Ministry of Spiritual Kinship (Cowley Publications, 2002), The Celtic Soul Friend (Ave Maria Press, 2002), Pilgrimage: Exploring a Great Spiritual Practice (Soren Books, 2004), Stories of the Celtic Soul Friends: Their Meaning for Today (Paulist, 2004), Wisdom of the Celtic Saints (Bog Walk Press, 2006), Finding the Monk Within: Great Monastic Values for Today (HiddenSpring, 2008), and The Double: Male Eros, Friendships, and Mentoring—from Gilgamesh to Kerouac (Lethe Press, 2013).  Professor Sellner is also a popular national and international speaker on the topics of mentoring, lay leadership, Celtic spirituality, the history of Christian monasticism, men’s issues, Thomas Merton and Zen Buddhism, and animal theology.

The Revd Dr Steven Shakespeare, PhD

is Lecturer in Philosophy at Liverpool Hope University in the Theology, Philosophy and Religious Studies Department. He previously completed his doctoral research on Kierkegaard at Cambridge University. Alongside a number of articles and chapters, his books include Kierkegaard, Language and the Reality of God (Ashgate, 2001), The Inclusive God: Reclaiming Theology for an Inclusive Church, co-authored with Hugh Rayment-Pickard (Canterbury Press, 2006), Radical Orthodoxy: A Critical Introduction (SPCK, 2007), Prayers for an Inclusive Church (Canterbury Press, 2008), Derrida and Theology (Continuum, 2009) and Beyond Human: From Animality to Transhumanism (Continuum, 2012), co-edited with Claire Molloy and Charlie Blake. His research interests include continental philosophy of religion and the significance of philosophical distinctions between humans and animals and between machines and organisms. He is a patron of the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals.

Professor Mary J. Shariff, PhD

is an Associate Professor of Law at Robson Hall, Faculty of Law, University of Manitoba, Canada. Professor Shariff received her PhD from Trinity College, Dublin. In addition to teaching the Law of Contracts in the first year of the JD program, she teaches the upper year courses Animals and the Law and Law and Bioethics in the JD program as well as Natural Resources Administration and the Law to Masters and PhD students at the Natural Resources Institute an Interdisciplinary program at the University of Manitoba aimed at “developing holistic perspectives” on environmental and natural resources management problems.  She also acts in a supervisory capacity for graduate students completing masters and PhD theses. Thesis supervisions have included research related to climate change and non-human (animal) rights. She is published in the areas of assisted death and animal law and is frequently engaged as a speaker on these topics. As a past Associate Dean of both the JD Program and Research and Graduate Studies within the Faculty of Law at the University of Manitoba, Professor Shariff is currently focusing on her research in law and bioethics, death and dying, environment, animals and legal strategies. As an extension and integration of these lines of research she is presently examining animal responses to nuclear incidents (whether accidental or by design) through the concept of “legal irony” drawing methodological inspiration from the work of American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.

Mikalah Singer, JD 

is the Founder and Executive Director of Fox Protection International, Science Policy Specialist at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, and the Co-Director of Northern America for the World Moot on International Law and Animal Rights. She is an Oregon-barred attorney with a JD, Certificate in Animal Law, and L.L.M. in Environmental, Natural Resources, and Energy Law from Lewis & Clark Law School (Portland, OR, USA). Mikalah completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and was part of the Toxicology Policy Program (Baltimore, MD, USA). Her primary research is the overall risks animal exploitation poses to human health. She focuses on supporting in vitro models in research and safety testing to facilitate the shift away from animal experimentation and prevent future pandemics related to wildlife trade and industrial animal agriculture by translating scientific information into policy initiatives. She has presented papers at conferences in the US, Canada, and the UK, and is published in both legal and scientific journals including the Animal Law Review, AMA Journal of Ethics, and ALTEX – Alternatives to Animal Experimentation.  

Professor Barry Smart, PhD

is currently Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences and in the Centre for European and International Studies Research at the University of Portsmouth, UK.  A citizen of Aotearoa/New Zealand and the United Kingdom he has held posts at the University of Auckland and the University of Sheffield and visiting positions at universities in Australia, Japan, and Spain. Current research and publication interests include ethical and environmental aspects of human/nonhuman animal relations; critical pedagogy and species ethics; and ethical, economic, and environmental aspects of veganism.  He is the author of numerous papers including ‘Nonhuman Animal Suffering: Critical Pedagogy and Practical Animal Ethics’ (in Society and Animals 2017) and ‘Suffering Existence: Nonhuman Animals and Ethics’ (in the The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics 2018).  Monographs include Michel Foucault (1985, numerous reprints), Modern Conditions, Postmodern Controversies (1992), Postmodernity (1993), Facing Modernity: Ambivalence, Reflexivity and Morality (1999), Economy, Culture and Society: A Sociological Critique of Neoliberalism (2003) and Consumer Society: Critical Issues and Environmental Consequences (2010). He has also edited Resisting McDonaldization (1999) and Michel Foucault: Critical Assessments I and II (1994 and 1995) and co-edited Handbook of Social Theory (2001) and Observation Methods (2013) and Critical Social Research Methods (2018).

Dr Magdalena Smrdelj, DVM

is the Chief Veterinary Officer at the Ontario SPCA and Humane Society in Ontario Canada.  She received a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences and Zoology from the University of Toronto, a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree from the Ontario Veterinary College at the University of Guelph, and Diplomate standing with the American College of Veterinary Preventive Medicine.  Dr Smrdelj is a keen advocate for animals with a long career in animal wellness and shelter medicine. As Chief Veterinary Officer, Dr. Smrdelj oversees Health and Wellness programs and initiatives and veterinary medical services for the Society.  With her team members, Dr Smrdelj focuses on a high standard of preventive care for all animals entering shelters that addresses both physical and emotional wellbeing while preparing them for their new home. To this end she oversaw the development of the shelterhealthpro.com website as an open resource for professionals as well as the public. She fosters and supports strong relationships and collaborative programs with partners in veterinary medicine, animal wellbeing, and other related industries. Dr Smrdelj’s professional interests and areas of focus include One Health-One Earth where the wellbeing of human, nonhuman and environment intersect, veterinary preventive medicine, emerging and zoonotic diseases and human-nonhuman relationships.

Dr Paola Sobbrio, PhD

Paola Sobbrio has a degree in Law, a PhD in Animal Welfare and Protection in EEC countries. Her PhD thesis focused on the ethical and legal aspects of xenotransplantation. Paola participated in the European project “Xenome”. In the last eighteen years, she has been teaching courses in legislation bioethics and biotechnology in several Italian universities. Paola held several seminars on animal law and bioethics and has participated as a speaker in various conferences concerning the relationship between law, ethics and animals. She is author of many scientific publications on these subjects. The following is a selected list of her most recent contributions: The relationship between Humans and other animals in European animal welfare legislation; Xenotransplantation and Human Rights; An overview of the role of society and risk in xenotransplantation (with Maria Jorquì); translation from American to Italian of the Melanie Joy book Why we love dogs, eat pigs and wear cows (with Alma Massaro); Translation from American to Italian of the Peter Singer book: The most good you can do. How effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically; and  Gli animali da produzione alimentare come esseri senzienti: considerazioni giuridiche e veterinarie (with Michela Pettorali).

Professor Kristen Stilt, JD, PhD

is a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.  She also serves as Faculty Director of the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program and Director of the Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World.  Stilt was named a Carnegie Scholar for her work on Constitutional Islam, and in 2013 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.  She has also received awards from Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays.  She received a JD from The University of Texas School of Law and a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.  Her research focuses on animal law, and in particular the intersection of animal law and religious law; Islamic law and society, and comparative constitutional law.  Representative publications include Islamic Law in Action (Oxford University Press, 2011); “Constitutional Innovation and Animal Protection in Egypt,” Law & Social Inquiry (2018); and “Law” in Critical Terms for Animal Studies, edited by Lori Gruen (University of Chicago Press, 2018). She is currently working on a new book project entitled Halal Animals: Food, Faith, and the Future of Planetary Health to be published by Oxford University Press and a Handbook of Global Animal Law with co-editors Anne Peters and Saskia Stucki.

Professor Alison Stone, DPhil

is Professor of Philosophy at Lancaster University. Her interests span feminist philosophy, the history of philosophy, continental European philosophy, aesthetics and ethics. Her most recent books are Being Born: Birth and Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2019), Frances Power Cobbe: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Feminist Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2022), Frances Power Cobbe (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2023). She is currently working on women’s thought about animal ethics in nineteenth-century Britain, including Cobbe, Anna Kingsford, Annie Besant, Helena Blavatsky, Vernon Lee, and Julia Wedgwood. 

Michael Swistara, JD

is an animal protection lawyer, advocate, and independent scholar. Michael is currently a Litigation Fellow at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, where he develops and litigates cases that improve the lives and status of nonhuman animals. He currently serves as the Newsletter Vice Chair of the American Bar Association’s International Animal Law Committee, Young Lawyer Chair of the Animal Law Committee, and Co-Chair of the Animals in Agriculture Subcommittee. Michael was previously an Emerging Scholars Fellow at the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy. His academic work focuses on the intersection of animal law with other areas of social justice, as well as on environmental justice, animals in the media, and food system change. Michael’s work has been published in numerous academic journals, including the Animal Law Review, the University of Miami Race and Social Justice Law Review, the Michigan Journal of Race and Law, and the Animal Studies Journal. He has spoken at conferences across North America on issues of animal protection and the law, including at the Canadian Animal Law Conference, McGill’s Animal & Environmental Law Student Conference, and the Vermont Law School’s Animals and Restorative Justice Symposium.  

Sister Lucille Claire Thibodeau, p.m., PhD

is a Sister of the Presentation of Mary, an international congregation of Roman Catholic women religious. She is Professor Emerita of English and Writer-in-Residence at Rivier University (NH, USA). She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (English, French, and Medieval Latin literatures) from Harvard University (1990). She has been an invited contributor to Continuum (ed. Justus George Lawler) and to the Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (ed. David Noel Freedman).  A Fellow of the American Council on Education, she is a former President of Rivier University (1997-2001). Her biography of Rivier’s founder, Crucible and Charism, was published in 2009 by Hollis Publishing. More recently, having become aware of the plight of factory farmed animals, she has focused her research on ethical and theological questions raised by animal suffering. In 2017, she was invited as an expert signatory, one of 200 worldwide, to address an open letter on industrial animal farming to the Director-General of the World Health Organization. Her latest publication is “‘All Creation Groans’: The Lives of Factory Farmed Animals in the United States” in Ethical Vegetarianism and Veganism, ed. Andrew and Clair Linzey (Routledge, 2019). She recently co-authored a chapter on animal ethics for a textbook by Joseph M. Forte, PhD., entitled Moral Issues and Movies: An Introduction to Ethical Theories and Issues Through the Lens of Film (available for course adoption in 2021). In Spring 2020, she gave an upper-level undergraduate course, “Animals, Justice, and Responsibility,” the first such course to be offered at Rivier University. Her goal is to create an undergraduate concentration in Animal Studies. In concert with animal activists, she remains involved in legislative activity on behalf of animals. On a personal note, for 21 years she was a caregiver and legal, financial, and medical advocate for a severely brain-injured person. She has brought the same level of commitment to adopting and caring for rescue, stray, and feral cats suffering from a variety of life-threatening ailments.

David Thomas

is a UK lawyer and co-founder of Advocates for Animals, the UK’s first animal protection law firm He is also consultant to Cruelty Free International and has acted for most of the other leading animal protection organisations in the UK and others further afield, specialising in using the law to advance campaigning objectives. He was formerly a civil litigation partner in a West End firm and then legal officer to a family poverty charity. He is experienced in EU and international law and has taken many test cases against public bodies. He is a consultant to a leading human rights law firm. David also sits as a part-time judge, hearing cases about welfare benefits, freedom of information and occupational pensions. He has written and contributed to several books and published innumerable articles in a wide variety of publications, on law, ethics and campaigning (including an article about the ethics of animal experiments in the Journal of Medical Ethics). David has taught human rights law and public law, including a recent course on judicial review to senior Chinese judges. He has given many talks and taken parts in debates and media appearances and has given evidence to several parliamentary committees, a Royal Commission and the Burns Inquiry into Hunting. David is a former chair (and current trustee) of the RSPCA and has been a member of other boards, including Cruelty Free International, Compassion in World Farming and a street children charity. He was a member of the Law Society’s mental and health committee and the Government’s panel on funding of public interest cases, and of the advisory committee for Burma Campaign UK. Until recently he was a Samaritan.

Dr Natalie Thomas (Evans), PhD

is an Instructor in Philosophy and Media Studies at the University of Guelph and the University of Guelph-Humber in Ontario, Canada. She holds a Masters of Philosophy in Environmental Ethics, and a PhD from the University of Waterloo, where she focused on animal minds and animal ethics. Her areas of research include the representation of the animals in the media, animal minds, selfhood, self-awareness and autonomy, animals and environmental ethics, and the conception of animals in Western and non-Western philosophy. She has presented papers on these topics, and is currently writing two books on animals in the media and media ethics. She is also developing a course for the University of Guelph on animals in philosophy, and designs and teaches courses in applied ethics, with a focus on animals and environmental issues. She recently published Animal Ethics and the Autonomous Animal Self (2016) as part of the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Book Series.

Dr Sabrina Tonutti, PhD

is a Lecturer and a Researcher in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Udine, Italy. After a degree in Humanities at the University of Trieste, Italy, in 1996, she specialised in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Padua, and received her PhD in 2006 for a dissertation on the anthropology of the animal rights movement. Her work was published in 2007 as Diritti Animali. Storia e antropologia di un movimento (Forum Ed.). Dr Tonutti is currently working at the Department of Economics, Society and Territory (University of Udine, Italy) and has carried out ethnographic research in Italy, Switzerland, and Great Britain. Her studies focus on human-animal relationships, new social movements (and particularly animal advocacy as a social and cultural phenomenon), biodiversity and local knowledge, anthropology of food, and epistemological reflections on the human-animal divide in anthropology. She is the author more than 30 articles and the following books: Water and Anthropology (EMI 2007); Manuale di zooantropologia (Meltemi, 2007, with R. Marchesini), and Animali magici (De Vecchi, 2000, with R. Marchesini).

Akisha Townsend Eaton, JD, OFS

is Senior Policy and Legal Resource Adviser to World Animal Net, where she also serves as the organization’s  main representative at the United Nations.  An independent legislative consultant in the field of animal protection, she formerly served as Assistant Legislative Counsel to the Humane Society of the United States and Animal Welfare Fellow in the United States Senate (office of Senator Mary Landrieu, D-LA). Townsend received her Juris Doctorate from Georgetown Law and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University with distinction.  She currently serves as Diversity Subcommittee Chair of the Animal Law Committee within the American Bar Association’s Tort, Trial, and Insurance Practice Section, as was a former Student Vice- Chair of the same committee. Active in her faith community and interested in the extension of compassionate stewardship toward animals within ecology, she is a member of a local faith-based integrity of creation committee, and was named a 2012 Young Adult Eco-Justice Fellow by the National Council of Churches. Townsend formerly served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Animal Law at Michigan State University College of Law, and her research has been published in the Journal of Animal Ethics, and The Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics (forthcoming).

Professor Joseph A. Tuminello, III, PhD

is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA. Joey is currently teaching courses in ethical theory and biomedical ethics, and his research examines the intersection of animal, food, and environmental ethics through the lenses of hermeneutics, pragmatism, and Jainism. He recently published a book chapter entitled “Jainism: Animals and the Ethics of Intervention” in the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Animal Protection (eds. Andrew Linzey and Clair Linzey, 2018). Beyond academia, Joey is also a Program Coordinator for the nonprofit organization Farm Forward, where his lead project has been an annual webinar event featuring Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Eating Animals.

Dr Elizabeth Tyson, PhD

is Director of the Born Free USA Primate Sanctuary in Texas, U.S.A., where over 500 individual non-human primates are cared for following rescue or re-homing from the pet trade, zoos or vivisection. Elizabeth was awarded her PhD in Animal Law from the University of Essex, United Kingdom, in 2018 just prior to relocating to the U.S. to take up her current role. Her doctoral research addressed the efficacy of regulatory licensing regimes as a means of protecting animals in captivity, particularly in zoos, in the U.K. She has worked for over fifteen years in the NGO sector, focusing in large part on the conservation and care of non-human primates and as a campaigner on issues surrounding the captivity of non-domesticated animals. Her publications include: “Speciesism and Zoos: Shifting the Paradigm, Maintaining the Prejudice” in The Palgrave Handbook of Practical Animal Ethics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), “The Harms of Captivity within Laboratories and Afterward” in the The Ethical Case Against Animal Experiments (University of Illinois Press, 2018),  “Making It Up As They Go Along: Marius and the Zoo Industry’s Inconsistent Approach to Self-Regulation”, Journal of Animal Welfare Law, March 2014; “For An End to Pinioning: The Case Against the Legal Mutilation of Birds”, Journal of Animal Ethics, Spring 2014, and “Regulating cruelty: The licensing of the use of wild animals in circuses”, Journal of Animal Welfare Law, January 2013.

Dr Kenneth Valpey, DPhil

also known as Krishna Kshetra Swami, is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies and the Dean of Studies at Bhaktivedanta College, Septon, Belgium.  As a practicing monk in the Chaitanya Vaishnava tradition of Krishna-bhakti, he has been engaged since 1972 in the study and teaching of Indic cultural and religious ideas and practices (including teaching at the University of Florida and Chinese University of Hong Kong), with an emphasis on comparative-integrative understanding of dharmic traditions and a concern to relate these with contemporary cultures. After completing his DPhil at the University of Oxford with a study of Vaishnava temple liturgical practices and theology (published by Routledge in 2006 as Attending Kṛṣṇa’s Image: Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Mūrti-sevā As Devotional Truth), he has been participating in an extended study of the classical Sanskrit text, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, of which he is presently completing an abridged translation for Columbia University Press (together with Ravi M. Gupta). Drawing on classical Indic sources, he has written and lectured on concepts of nonviolence and the containment of violence through ritual, and on the application of yoga principles and practices to thought on animal-human relations. In forthcoming work, he seeks to foster and participate in animal studies that draw upon and nourish Indic dharma traditions, including explorations of constructive thought on animal ethics for contemporary Hindu communities.

Professor Thomas I. White, PhD

is the Conrad N. Hilton Professor in Business Ethics and Director of the Centre for Ethics and Business at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. Professor White received his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University and taught at Upsala College (1976-89) and Rider University (1989-94) in New Jersey before moving to California in 1994. His publications include five books: Right and Wrong (Prentice Hall, 1988), Discovering Philosophy (Prentice Hall, 1991), Business Ethics (Macmillan, 1993), Men and Women at Work (Career Press, 1994), and In Defense of Dolphins (Blackwell 2007), and numerous articles on topics ranging from sixteenth-century Renaissance humanism to business ethics. For the first twenty years of his career, Professor White specialised in the moral, social and political thought of Sir Thomas More. Since then, he has concentrated on contemporary applied ethics. His most recent research has focused on the philosophical implications – especially the ethical implications – of the scientific research on dolphins. His book on this topic (In Defense of Dolphins: The New Moral Frontier) addresses the ethical issues connected with human/dolphin interaction – in particular, the deaths and injuries of dolphins in connection with the human fishing industry and the captivity of dolphins in the entertainment industry. The book argues that dolphins should be considered nonhuman persons and that the current state of dolphin/human interaction is ethically indefensible. He is currently studying the parallels between defences of slavery two hundred years ago and contemporary defences of the deaths, injuries and captivity of dolphins at the hands of humans. Professor White is a Scientific Adviser to the Wild Dolphin Project, a research organisation studying a community of Atlantic spotted dolphins in the Bahamas. He is also an Ambassador of the United Nations’ Year of the Dolphin programme. He was the 2007 Verizon Visiting Professor of Business, Ethics and Information Technology at the Centre for Business Ethics at Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts.

The Revd Dr Cassandra Carkuff Williams, EdD

serves as National Coordinator, Discipleship Resource Development for National Ministries, American Baptist Churches, USA. Dr Williams has worked in Christian educational development since 1998. She is interested in the processes by which persons are moved to change long-held beliefs and long-standing practices. She received her EdD from Union Theological Seminary/Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia. In her doctoral dissertation, ‘Andrew Linzey’s Animal Theology and the Educational Ministry of the Christian Church: Guidelines for Educating Toward Transformation of the Human/Animal Relationship’, she sought to draw insights from Linzey’s writings and place them alongside the work of transformational educational theorists to outline an effective teaching approach for potentially controversial topics. A second area of interest lies in the development of a creation/creature theology that integrates the biblical witness and bridges the gap between environmentalists and animal proponents. Her publications include: Children Among Us: Foundations in Children’s Ministries, (ed), Louisville: Witherspoon Press, 2003; Children, Poverty, and the Bible, Valley Forge: National Ministries Communications, 2006; ‘Introduction for Parents and Leaders’, Tobee and the Amazing Bird Choir, Louisville: Bridge Resources, 1999; Left Behind: The Facts Behind the Fiction Companion Guide (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 2006); ‘Liberating the Enlightenment: How a Transformed Relationship with Animals Can Help Us Transcend Modernity’, Religious Education, Vol. 98, Winter 2003, 95–107; ‘Please, Don’t Call Me a Vegetarian’, Horizons, Summer 2000, and ‘Sunday School Lessons’, Christian Citizen: Voices for Biblical Justice, Vol. 2, 2004.

Amy P. Wilson

is an LLD Candidate, Research Associate and Lecturer at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa (UJ). Amy is a licensed attorney with over 12 years of professional legal experience and holds an LLM in Animal Law (Hons) from Lewis & Clark Law School, and BCom Law and LLB Degrees from University of Johannesburg. Amy is the founder, director and former executive director of the first dedicated animal law non-profit in her country, Animal Law Reform South Africa. She is a Senior Adjunct Lecturer with the University of the Western Cape and has held academic positions in the USA at Lewis & Clark Law School as the Aquatic Animal Law Initiative Fellow and at UCLA School of Law as the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law and Policy Fellow. Amy is currently co-editing and contributing to the first Animal Law book in South Africa and co-authoring a book on Aquatic Animal Law, Policy and Science. Amy has written several articles and book chapters on animal law and the intersection of rights of humans, animals and nature and her research explores creative approaches to the attainment of an inclusive system of justice. Amy is an independent expert with the United Nations in Harmony with Nature Programme and founding Steering Committee Member of the Global Alliance for Rights of Nature African Hub and she has leadership roles with several African based animal NGOs. 

Steven M. Wise, JD

is President of the Nonhuman Rights Project, the mission of which is to attain fundamental legal rights for at least some nonhuman animals through litigation and legislation in the United States and throughout the world. He received a BS in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary and a JD from the Boston University School, of Law. He teaches “Animal Rights Jurisprudence” at the Vermont Law School and the Lewis and Clark Law School in the United States, and at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He has taught “Animal Rights Law” at the Harvard University, University of Miami, St. Thomas and John Marshall Law Schools. He is the author of four books: Rattling the Cage – Toward Legal Rights for Animals (Perseus Books, 2000); Drawing the Line – Science and the Case for Animal Rights (Perseus Books, 2003) Though the Heavens May Fall – The Landmark Trial That Led to the End of Human Slavery (Da Capo Press, 2005), and An American Trilogy – Death, Slavery, and Dominion Along the Banks of the Cape Fear River (Da Capo Press, 2009), as well as numerous law review articles, popular articles, and book reviews. His work is the subject of the Hegedus and Pennebaker /HBO/BBC/ARTE France/VIPRO film, “Unlocking the Cage,” which premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

Professor Jan Zámečník, PhD

is Assistant Professor at the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University in Prague. He also teaches at the Faculty of Social Studies of Masaryk University in Brno.  Dr. Zámečník is an ordained minister of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren and a member of its Advisory Council for Environmental Issues. He is co-founder of the non-profit, ecumenical and environmentally oriented association Společný domov [Common Home]. His areas of professional interest are the relationship between fiction and ethics, the theological foundations of ethics, and especially environmental issues, including moral obligations to non-human creatures. He wrote a monograph Hledáš-li Boha v lásce…: čtyři teologické studie o Josefu Šafaříkovi [If You Seek God in Love…: Four Theological Studies on Josef Šafařík] (Karolinum 2020), which explores the work of the philosopher Josef Šafařík who influenced the thinking of the first Czech president, Václav Havel. His recent publications include “From Steward to Sibling: The Future of Environmental Metaphors,” Communio Viatorum 62(2) (2020): 148-183, and “Disfigurement – On Environmental Sin,” Communio Viatorum 63(3) (2021): 227-267. He initiated the publication and co-translated into Czech Animal Theology by Andrew Linzey and Of God and Pelicans: A Theology of Reverence for Life by Jay B. McDaniel, and accompanied both translations with extensive afterwords exploring the reasoning of both authors.  

2012, Dr Chris Danta

2009, Professor Eleonora Gullone

Dr Damiano Benvegnù, Dott. Ric., PhD

is a Lecturer at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. His current research focuses on representations of animals and animality in modern literature, visual art, and philosophy. Benvegnù has published essays and articles on issues such as poetry produced in peripheral languages (particularly by multilingual and diglossic communities) and the interactions between aesthetics, history, and nature. He is currently completing a book project on the ethical and aesthetic value of literary animals in the work of the Jewish-Italian writer and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi.

Rebeka Breder

is the founder of Breder Law in Vancouver, one of the first full-time animal law private practices in Canada. Her entire legal practice is devoted to protecting and advancing the interests of animals through litigating animal law related disputes. When acting for individuals, Rebeka takes on cases such as the defence of dogs, condominium disputes, pet custody issues, wrongful death, and many other issues. When acting for organizations, Rebeka challenges government authority with respect to its actions or inactions regarding animals, such as the live export of horses or killing wildlife, and she provides general animal law-related consulting. Her cases have, and continue, to set positive precedent for animals, including courts recognizing the best interests of animals. Rebeka has been recognized by various awards including, the Top 25 Most Influential Lawyer in Canada by Canadian Lawyer Magazine, winning the Changemakers category (2019), Best Lawyers Canada (2022, 2023), and the SEEDS award by the International Society for Animal Rights (2019). She was also honoured to be a TEDx speaker in November, 2022. Rebeka helped start up the University of British Columbia Allard Law School Animal Law course in 2013, where she taught as an adjunct professor, and she has taught as an adjunct professor or guest lecturer at various other Canadian and international universities. She is the founder and current Chair of the first Canadian Bar Association animal law section (since 2008). Rebeka’s submissions to government have also been recently reflected in legislation dealing with the best interest of animals in pet custody disputes – a first of its kind in Canada. Rebeka provides her legal input on other animal protection issues at the federal, provincial and local levels. You may also see Rebeka featured by radio, television and print media, including in recent documentaries such as Part of the Pack (Knowledge Network), and CTV W5 on pet custody. Some of Rebeka’s work will be published in an encyclopedia (to be announced soon).  

Dr Adam J. Bridgen, DPhil

was recently awarded a DPhil in English Literature from Oxford University, for his landmark exploration of the significance of transatlantic slavery in British labouring-class writing during the long eighteenth century. An interdisciplinary scholar, he seeks to complicate and enrich existing histories of empire, environment, and animal ethics by considering forms of writing not traditionally given attention in academic scholarship. His research on ‘shoemaker-poet’ James Woodhouse (1735-1820) has been published in the Huntington Library Quarterly, Vol. 80, No. 1 (2017) and on their Verso blog, and his latest work on the incipient ecosocialism of labouring-class writing will appear in the collection Romantic Environmental Sensibility: Nature, Class, and Empire, edited by Ve-Yin Tee (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming). His main contribution to the field of animal ethics concerns the vegetarian hat-maker and self-help writer Thomas Tryon (1634-1703): he has work forthcoming on Tryon’s theology of animal enslavement, as well as on his influential rejection of fur-wearing — for which he received the British Society of Eighteenth Century Studies Committee Award — and is currently working on a book-length study of Tryon aimed at a popular readership. He was President of the Oxford University Society Animal Ethics Society from 2014-15, and contributed to the development of the pioneering 2016 ‘Veggie Norrington Table’.

The Revd Jennifer Brown

is Tutor for the Cuddesdon School of Theology and Ministry (CSTM) at Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford. As Tutor, she oversees the CSTM programme and teaches a variety of subjects, including liturgy, psychology of religion, and ethics. She completed her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology at George Mason University in the U.S.A., and her MA in the Psychology of Religion at Heythrop College, University of London. The portion of her MA thesis relating to animal welfare, A psychological approach to contradictions between Christian teaching and attitudes towards animals  was presented at the 2011 conference of the British Association of Social Anthropology. Jennifer trained for the Church of England ministry on the St Albans and Oxford Ministry Course and was ordained in the Church of England in 2005. She was formerly Chaplain to Jesus College, Oxford.  Her review of Trevor Beeson’s The Church’s Other Half: Women’s Ministry appeared in Theology in 2012. She is a Committee Member of the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals and editor of their magazine, Animalwatch.

Dr Samantha Calvert, PhD

has recently been awarded a PhD by the University of Birmingham for her thesis on Christianity and vegetarianism 1809 – 2009.  Her publications include “A Taste of Eden: Modern Christianity and Vegetarianism”, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 58, No. 3, July 2007, and “‘Ours is the Food that Eden Knew’: Themes in the Theology and Practice of Modern Christian Vegetarians”, Eating and Believing, Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vegetarianism and Theology, edited by Rachel Muers and David Grumett, T. & T. Clark, 2008. Encyclopedia entries include: “The Internet” in the Cultural Encyclopedia of Vegetarianism, edited by Margaret Paskar-Pasewicz, ABC-CLIO, 2011, “Vegetarianism in Britain and America” in the Global Guide to Animal Protection, edited by Andrew Linzey, University of Illinois Press, 2013, and “Vegetarianism” in the Encyclopedia of Bioethics , fourth edition, Macmillan, forthcoming. She is a member of the academic advisory board of the Christian Vegetarian Association U.K. (CVAUK).  Sam is currently working on a new edited edition of one of the earliest vegetarian domestic manuals Vegetarian Cookery by A Lady (Martha Brotherton) for Manchester University Press.  Samantha has worked in communications for both the Vegetarian and Vegan Societies (UK).

Professor Lauren Corman, PhD

is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. She teaches classes in the area of Critical Animal Studies, which engages an intersectional approach to “the question of the animal.” As such, Dr Corman’s interdisciplinary scholarship draws on animal rights/liberation, posthumanist, feminist, critical race, labour and environmental theories and practices. Much of her graduate work focused on an analysis of Canadian and U.S. slaughterhouses, with emphasis on the industrialized exploitation of pigs. Her doctoral dissertation, The Ventriloquist’s Burden? Animals, Voice, and Politics analysed voice and its relationship to nonhuman animal subjectivities. This project was inspired in part through her many years as the host and producer of the weekly animal issues radio program, “Animal Voices”, on CIUT 89. FM in Toronto. Her current research interests include animal agency and resistance, theories of abjection, and coalition-building among social justice movements. Dr Corman has been interviewed for Satya, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, and Striking at the Roots: A Practical Guide to Animal Activism. She was the guest editor for “Animal,” a unique issue of Undercurrents: Journal of Critical Environmental Studies in 2008. Her publications include: “Impossible Subjects: The Figure of the Animal in Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, Journal of Environmental Education, 16, 29-45, 2011, and  “Getting Their Hands Dirty: Raccoons, Freegans, and ‘Urban Trash'”, Journal for Critical Animal Studies, LX, 3, 28-61, 2011.

Elizabeth Dale

is a student in the Master of Divinity course at the University of Divinity in Melbourne. She is an aspiring animal theologian and is part-way through a doctoral thesis titled “A Theology of Animal Beauty”. Elizabeth has qualifications in biological science, arts, and education, and has a First Class Honours degree in English Literature from the University of Queensland.  Elizabeth’s specific scholarly interests are animal theology; the place and treatment of non-human animals in varying religious traditions; changing understandings of animals across cultures and historical periods; the representation of animals in poetry, film, fine art; and the aesthetics of animals. She is the author of “Ecological Asceticism: Saint Basil the Great in Conversation with John Zizioulas”, in Tjurunga: An Australasian Benedictine Review 84 (Easter 2014), pp. 42-53. Elizabeth’s main advocacy concerns are live animal export; ethical food production; animals as “raw materials” and experimental subjects; animal abuse and neglect. She is a member of the Australian Animal Studies Group and the Animals and Society Institute.

Danielle Duffield

is a litigation lawyer and adjunct animal law lecturer. She has been involved in animal advocacy work in New Zealand, Europe, and the United States, including through policy projects, litigation, lecturing, academic work and movement building. She co-founded and served as president of New Zealand’s animal law advocacy organisation, the New Zealand Animal Law Association, and co-chairs the Farmed Animal Welfare Committee of the UK Centre for Animal Law. She has published articles on animal law in various law journals including the Animal Law Review, the New Zealand Universities Law Review, the New Zealand Law Journal, and the UK Journal of Animal Law. She has a Bachelor of Laws with First Class Honours and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics from the University of Otago in New Zealand, and a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School, where she was a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow.

Maximilian Padden Elder

has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, where he was the recipient of the Virgil C. Aldrich prize awarded for dedication to, and excellence in, the study of philosophy. He spent a year studying Philosophy and Animal Ethics at Mansfield College, Oxford University, and was also a Committee Member of the Oxford University Animal Ethics Society. Max has worked as a policy analyst intern at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) where he focused on the source of lion meat sold in the United States as well as noise pollution in the ocean and its effect on whale communication and migration. He has been an Existentialism teaching assistant for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth during the summers of 2012 and 2013. Max has reviewed Timothy Pachirat’s Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight for the Journal of Animal Ethics, and is currently working on a paper on sentiency in fish and its moral implications.

Dr Raffael N. Fasel, PhD

is a Teaching Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies in Law at Jesus College, Cambridge, and holds a £440,000 research grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Raffael was previously a research fellow at LSE Law School. He obtained his PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College), with a thesis on the legal theory and intellectual history of human and animal rights, for which he was awarded the University’s Yorke Prize. During his doctoral studies, Raffael co-founded the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law and currently serves as its Executive Director. He also co-created Europe’s first Animal Rights Law course at the Cambridge Law Faculty, which he co-lectures. He holds a Bachelor of Law and a Master of Law degree from the University of Fribourg, an MA in Philosophy from University College London, and an LLM from Yale Law School.

Carl Tobias Frayne

is a PhD candidate in Divinity at St John’s College, Cambridge. He graduated first in philosophy with First Class Honours from the University of Melbourne and spent a year at St Peter’s College, Oxford, reading philosophy and theology. He holds a Master of Arts in Divinity from the University of Chicago, where he pursued his interest in philosophical and theological ethics, as well as ecclesiastical history. His recent academic work on non-human animals includes an article developing Schweitzer’s concept of reverence for life in and a comparative study of the place of creatures and creation in Islam and Christianity. He also wrote a brief history of abstinence from meat in the Christian tradition, which was published in the Journal of Animal Ethics (Fall 2016, 6(2)).

Samual A. Garner

is a Senior Bioethicist (contractor) in the Division of AIDS (DAIDS), the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States. Prior to coming to DAIDS in 2011, he was a health science policy analyst (contractor) in the Clinical Research Policy Analysis and Coordination (CRpac) Program, Office of Biotechnology Activities (OBA), Offices of Science Policy (OSP), NIH.  In addition to his work in human research ethics, he writes on our obligations to non-human animals, specifically in the areas of animal research ethics and animal agriculture. He received a bachelor’s degree in music performance from Connecticut College in 2007, with a minor in philosophy, and a master’s degree in bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2009. His affiliation with the Oxford Centre represents his own views and not those of the NIH or any other part of the U.S. Federal Government.

Michael Glover

is a doctoral candidate at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State in South Africa. His primary academic focus is an emergent form of animal history that acknowledges animals as richly sentient and therefore worthy of historical investigation for their own sake. He is conducting research for a cattle-centred history of Southern Africa, focusing on 20th century colonialism’s effects on cattle. He has an Honours in Philosophy (Rhodes), a PGDip in Education Technology (Cape Town), and an MA in Economic History (Cape Town). He was a Mandela Rhodes scholar from 2013 to 2015. At the University of Cape Town he was on the Senate Animal Ethics Committee and the Faculty of Health Sciences Animal Ethics Committee. He has published internationally in open education, animal history, and animal ethics.  Relevant publications include ‘Animals off the menu: a racist proposal?’ in Animals, Race, and Multiculturalism edited byLuis Cordeiro-Rodrigues and Les Mitchell (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) and ‘A cattle-centred history of Southern Africa?’ in Nature Conservation in Southern Africa Morality and Marginality: Towards Sentient Conservation edited by Harry Wels, Marja Spierenberg, and Jan-Bart Gewald (Brill Press, 2018). With Dr Les Mitchell (FOCAE) and others, Michael is a co-founder of the Cape Town Animal Conference.

Dr Lena Hehemann, PhD

was awarded a PhD from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, for her thesis on the authorization of animal experiments. Her thesis focused on the conflict between the priorities of animal protection and scientific freedom in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Her publications include, inter alia, “The administrative appeal in animal experimentation law” (Schweizerische Juristen-Zeitung 12/2012, 403, in German) and “The Protection of the Dignity of Laboratory Animals in Switzerland” (Global Journal of Animal Law, 6/2018). She received a Bachelor of Law from the Technical University of Dresden, and a LLM from Reykjavík, Iceland, in international environmental law and natural resources law. In her master thesis she analysed the role of the European Union in relation to the conservation of endangered shark species. Presently, Dr Hehemann is a scientific researcher for the Federal Office for the Environment in Switzerland. She also works as an independent researcher. She collaborates, among others, with the Swiss animal protection organisation “Tier im Recht”.

Dr Katie Javanaud, DPhil

is currently a Visiting Lecturer and Researcher in the Department of Religion at Princeton University, where she is also affiliated with the University Centre for Human Values. Her area of academic specialization is in Buddhist philosophy and ethics and she recently completed her DPhil in this field at the University of Oxford. However, Katie’s main interest has always been in animal ethics and from a young age she has been a passionate advocate of animal rights. Her publications appear in The Journal of Animal Ethics, The Journal of Buddhist Ethics and The Journal of Indian Philosophy as well as in popular philosophy outlets such as Philosophy Now and Aeon magazine. With her training in both Western and non-Western philosophy, Katie recognizes the importance of cultural sensitivity when engaging with core issues in animal ethics, but she firmly believes that a concern for truth and respect for sentient beings should guide our emerging discipline.

Rebecca Jenkins

is an academic and legal scholar interested in social justice, public policy and food policy as it relates to animals, people and our natural environment. She received her LL.B degree from Trinity College Dublin, and her LL.M in Animal Law from Lewis & Clark Law School where she received the animal law ambassador award. She has presented on intersectionally focused animal issues in publications such as the Animal Law Journal,  the Journal of Animal Ethics, Washington College of Law’s Sustainable Development Law & Policy Journal, and more. She has presented on intersectional animal issues across the U.S as well as in Mexico and the United Kingdom. 

Robert Patrick Stone Lazo

is currently working toward a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and has spent the 2013-2014 at Mansfield College, Oxford, where he has studied Ancient Philosophy and Animal Ethics and received the Best Visiting Student award for Hilary Term. He was also a Committee Member of the Oxford University Animal Ethics Society in his time there and was the leader of the Clean Up Cruelty Campaign for Oxford Students for Animals (OSFA). He has written a forthcoming review of Alistair Holden’s Animals in the Classical World: Ethical Perspectives from Greek and Roman Texts for the Journal for Animal Ethics and will be presenting at the Oxford Summer School for Religion and Animal Protection on the role of Venus in the Roman poet Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura and her connection to animal ethics in the work. His interests include Epicureanism, Stoicism, and Neoplatonism, particularly with regard their views on animal ethics, the psychology behind the change from a meat-eating to a vegetarian or vegan diet, and American Transcendentalism and Pragmatism as they relate to the philosophy of natural science.

Dr Thomas Lepeltier, PhD

is a French independent scholar and science writer. After completing a PhD in Astrophysics, he oriented his research toward the history and philosophy of science, with a strong interest in scientific theories concerning, on the one hand, the history of life and, on the other hand, the universe. This led him to study respectively the theory of evolution and cosmological models. His main books on these topics are Darwin hérétique (Seuil, 2007), Univers parallèles (Seuil, 2010) and La Face cachée de l’univers (Seuil, 2014). While he was doing research on these subjects, he discovered animal ethics and opened up his specialist areas even further. In 2013, he published La Révolution végétarienne (Éditions Sciences Humaines, 2013), arguing that the evolution of our society should led it to ban animal products in order to be consistent with its own values. Of course, the idea encounters strong resistance, particularly in France. But in a more recent book, L’Imposture intellectuelle des carnivores (Max Milo, 2017), Thomas Lepeltier shows that the justifications for the consumption of animal products put forward by academics and journalists are nonsense. This does not mean he thinks that arguments used to defend animals are always correct. In particular, in a forthcoming paper, he criticizes the reliance on science as a foundation for vegan ethics:  “A critique of some appeals to science in animal ethics” in the Journal of Animal Ethics. In addition, convinced that the questions raised by animal ethics go beyond the consumption of animal products, he is currently studying animal suffering in the wild. In an article to be published in a book he has co-edited about antispeciesism, La Révolution antispéciste (Presses Universitaires de France, 2018), he even tries to find a solution to the problem of predation (“Faut-il sauver la gazelle du lion?”). Otherwise, when he is not trying to save non-human animals or to understand the cosmos, Thomas Lepeltier writes articles for French popular science magazines (mainly Sciences Humaines and La Recherche). His website is http://thomas.lepeltier.free.fr.

Hadas Marcus

teaches English for Academic Purposes at Tel Aviv University, Oranim Academic College of Education and the Ruppin Academic Center School of Marine Sciences. She has illustrated and written about animals for various publications, and her work was featured in the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson Birds in Art exhibit in 1991. She earned her MA in Comparative Literature (contemporary Spanish, English and Hebrew) with honours at UCLA in 1981. Since then, she has focused on nature poets and authors straddling science and humanities, especially Pablo Neruda, Robinson Jeffers and Rachel Carson.  The majority of her endeavors involve animal welfare, environmental education, biology, and the arts; she places a strong emphasis on ecocritical studies and ecocinema, or literature, art and film with environmental themes.  She actively participates in a research forum on the Animal-Human Bond at the Tel Aviv University Porter School of Environmental Studies. Her publications include:  “The Early Origins of the Animal Rights Movement” in Who’s Talking Now? Multispecies Relations from Human and Animals’ Point of View (Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2015) and “An Ecocritical Approach to Cruelty in the Laboratory”, in the Journal of Animal Ethics (2016).

Dr Ryan Patrick McLaughlin, PhD

is visiting assistant professor in religious ethics at Siena College in Latham, NY. His recent publications include Christian Theology and the Status of Animals: The Dominant Tradition and Its Alternatives in the Palgrave Macmillan Animal Ethics Series (2014) and Preservation and Protest: Theological Foundations for an Eco-Eschatological Ethics (Fortress Press, 2014), as well as a number of articles.  Currently, he is working on a manuscript for Fortress Press on Christian theology and the origin of natural evil.  His central research interest is nonhuman theological ethics, however, he also has publications in the areas of interreligious dialogue and feminism.​

Nuria Menéndez de Llano

is a Lawyer and doctoral candidate in animal studies at the University of Valladolid, Spain. Her main field of research is animal ethics, animal law and policy. She is a pioneering Spanish animal rights lawyer who founded the first Animal Law Firm in the region of Asturias (www.menendezdellano-abogados.es). She was co-founder of the Animal Law Commission at the Bar Association of Oviedo. She has collaborated as a pro bono consultant for years with several Spanish animal rights charities. She runs since 2012 the non-profit organization called Observatorio Justicia y Defensa Animal (www.justiciaydefensaanimal.es), which works for the enforcement of the animal law in Spain: prosecuting animal abuse, checking the legality of cruel animal festivals, and educating the public about animals and animal rights law.

Kelsi Nagy

is a doctoral candidate at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. She has an MA in Philosophy from Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, and an MS in Anthrozoology from Canisius College, Buffalo, New York. She is an editor of the collection Trash Animals: How We Live with Nature’s Filthy, Feral, Invasive and Unwanted Species (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) that offers new perspectives on ethical engagement with so-called ‘pest’ species. Current research for her doctoral thesis focuses on street cattle welfare in India, which is an extension of her previous research on cattle welfare in various cultural contexts in different parts of the world. Some of this research on cattle welfare in Spain, India, Argentina, the United States and England can be read on the blog worldcowgirl.wordpress.com, which received a 2012 Culture and Animals Foundation grant. During the 2013-2014 school year she served as vice president of the Oxford University Animal Ethics society. Current writing interests combine critical animal studies with cultural geography.

Bridget Nicholls

is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology & Criminology, and works with the Animal and Interpersonal Abuse Research Group, at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Bridget holds a BA in labour studies and an MA in social justice and equity studies from Brock University, where she researched the tensions and limitations of animal cruelty officers and also served as a humane jobs fellow. She is in the final stage of her doctoral thesis, titled “Expanding the Carceral State?: An Examination of Animal Cruelty Prosecutions.” Bridget’s research has been supported by a Health Research Centre for the Study of Violence against Women Graduate Student Research Scholarship. Bridget is currently working on multiple co-authored publications in policy, domestic violence, and animal abuse, and her scholarship embraces a non-speciesist approach. A recent, relevant publication is titled Animal Protection: Organizational Constraints and Collaborative Opportunities. In addition to her academic work, Bridget volunteers in her community to change lives by raising future service dogs with a local organization.  

Melanie Jasmin Ort

is a biomedical researcher at Freie Universität and Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin. She received her Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Freiburg, Germany. She had the chance to work internationally at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She was a visiting researcher at Whitehead Institute of biomedical research at MIT, and Harvard medical school Boston, USA. She combines patient-centered studies with animal-free research to decipher the role of adaptive immunity in musculoskeletal regeneration. She develops and applies advanced human 2D and 3D in vitro methods. For which the animal welfare officer of the State of Berlin awarded her the young scientist prize. As part of her research, she works very closely with her colleagues in orthopedic and trauma surgery and actively promotes the use of patient tissues and cells in research to improve the translation of research results into clinical applications. She is also actively involved in teaching non-animal methods and bioethics in regard to animal experiments to younger PhDs student. She publishes in biomedical journals such as Advanced science, Nature communications and Frontiers of Immunology. 

Dr Stephanie O’ Flynn, PhD

is a Lecturer in Law in the Department of Law and Criminal Justice at Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland. Stephanie holds a B.A. (Hons) in Legal Studies with Business (WIT), an LL.M. (University College Cork) and a Ph.D. (National University of Ireland, Galway). As part of her Masters, she completed a thesis entitled “Irish Animal Protection Laws.” Her doctoral thesis is entitled “From Animal Welfare to Animal Rights: Rethinking the Legal Paradigm.” Stephanie’s main lines of research focus on the legal status of animals, animal rights theory and EU and comparative animal protection law. She has a particular interest in the legal treatment of dogs, both as companion animals and in sport.

Carlos Frederico Ramos de Jesus

is a lawyer and PhD candidate in Law at São Paulo University, Brazil. His PhD thesis concerns the moral and legal status of animals.  He was awarded his Bachelor of Laws in 2004, and his Master of Laws in 2008, from São Paulo University. He participated in Yale Law School Linkages Program in 2003. In 2015 he founded a study group on animal ethics in São Paulo University Law School (Grupo de Estudos de Ética e Direito Animal – GEDA) which he currently coordinates.  In his masters degree, he focused on normative theory and human rights, especially  the liberal-egalitarian argument and his book John Rawls (Juruá, 2011) explores these themes. He has written papers on human rights, philosophy of law, private law and victims´ rights. His paper “A Rawlsian Case against Animal Experimentation” is forthcoming in The Ethical Case Against Animal Experimentation.

Frances Margaret Cecilia Robinson, MRCVS

graduated from the University of Glasgow Veterinary College in 1971 with a degree in Veterinary Medicine and Surgery. From 1971 to 1980 she worked in private veterinary practice in Glasgow, Epsom, and the Isle of Arran, and, from 1981 to 1986, she worked for the PDSA in Nottingham. In 1986 she moved to Cheshire, where she did occasional locum work in small animal practice. In 1989, she retired from practice. A heightened awareness of environmental problems – in particular, the loss of biodiversity and global animal welfare problems, the discovery of Peter Singer’s book Animal Liberation, and the exposé of some of the experiments which were being done on animals in the name of science predisposed to her returning to university in 1996. In 2000, she graduated with a BA in Philosophy and Environmental Management from the University of Keele. In 2001, she was awarded an MA in Values and the Environment from the University of Lancaster, with a dissertation entitled ‘The Relevance of Chaos to Environmental Ethics’. She returned to the University of Lancaster to research the relevance of the study of complex adaptive systems to environmental ethics – with particular focus on the epistemological basis for the use of animals in scientific experimentation. The study was multidisciplinary in nature, and she graduated with an MPhil in Philosophy in 2011. Her thesis was entitled ‘Animal Experimentation, Complexity and Animal Ethics’. She has presented at various institutions, including the University of Lancaster and at the Minding Animals Conference in Utrecht.

Dr Thomas Ryan, PhD

is a social worker who lives and works in country north-east Tasmania, Australia. He has spent most of his life in country communities, and animals have always been part and parcel of the wider Ryan household. In 1993 he graduated with a Bachelor of Social Work with First Class Honours degree from James Cook University in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia. His honours thesis, the first in social work concerning animals, was entitled ‘The Widening Circle: Should Social Work Concern Itself with Nonhuman Animal Rights?’ In late 2006, he was awarded a PhD in social work by Edith Cowan University in Bunbury, Western Australia, with a doctoral thesis, the first in the discipline,  titled ‘Social Work, Independent Realities, and the Circle of Moral Considerability: Respect for Humans, Animals and the Natural World’.

Dr Ryan’s publications include Animals and Social Work: A Moral Introduction (2011),  and his edited Animals in Social Work: Why and How They Matter (2014), both published by Palgrave Macmillan as part of their Animal Ethics Book Series. He has also published ‘Social Work and Nonhuman Animal Rights’, Northern Radius,1(1), November 1993, and  a chapter in Environmental Social Work (Routledge, 2012). Dr Ryan’s doctoral theses and publications represent pioneering contributions to the discipline of social work; they present cogent arguments for the inclusion of animals within social work’s moral and conceptual frameworks, and articulate a revised social work code of ethics that has profound theoretical and practical consequences for the discipline and its practitioners.

Professor Carl Saucier-Bouffard

is a professor in the Department of Humanities at Dawson College in Montreal, Canada, where he teaches courses in environmental and animal ethics. He graduated with a BA (First Class Honours) in Political Science from McGill University in 2004. He won a British Chevening scholarship to the University of Oxford gaining an MPhil in Political Theory in 2007. His MPhil dissertation examined the different modes of political communication used by Peter Singer and Martin Luther King, Jr. in delineating the boundaries of the moral community. He subsequently completed a research internship at the Martin Luther King Jr., Research and Education Institute at Stanford University in 2008, where he provided research assistance for two of Professor Clayborne Carson’s publications. His main research interests are the moral status of non-human animals, and the social movements working towards the expansion of our sphere of moral consideration, including the animal rights movement. His most recent research has focused on the psychological conditions that are likely to make non-academics receptive to the demands of these social movements. For instance, he spent the summer of 2012 at Stanford University’s Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) in order to complete the Compassion Cultivation Training course and to study the effects of contemplative practices on compassionate behaviour. He is the author of an article on the legal rights of great apes for The Global Guide to Animal Protection (forthcoming from the University of Illinois Press). He was also involved with the political aspect of the animal rights movement during his stint as a House of Commons researcher in the United Kingdom in 2003, where he worked on behalf of Mrs Julie Morgan MP on an ultimately successful bill making it illegal to hunt with hounds. In his efforts to educate the public about the importance of making ethical food choices, he co-launched the Quebec Meatless Mondays campaign in 2010. He also regularly collaborates with the Montreal Vegetarian Association to organise public events and to publish online documents on issues relevant to animal ethics.

Erin Sharoni

is a Master of Bioethics graduate student at Harvard Medical School (HMS) Center for Bioethics. She is a member of the Harvard Animal Law Society and serves on the leadership team of the Harvard GSAS Biotechnology Club, where she pursues policy and technology that advance the status of animals. Erin’s academic work at HMS focuses on the moral obligation to bear witness to animal suffering in agriculture and scientific research, and the ethical imperative to pursue microphysiological systems (e.g., organ chips) and artificial intelligence (AI) models to replace animal use in research. She is currently a researcher for the National Institutes of Health’s Bridge To Artificial Intelligence program, where she focuses on the ethical application of AI in precision medicine. Erin’s professional work in the biotechnology sector sits at the intersection of longevity, epigenetics, and AI, and leverages her academic pursuit of animal-free technology; she is currently working on AI technology that predicts Alzheimer’s Disease up to a decade prior to onset in asymptomatic individuals. Her notable publications include “Longitudinal analysis of biomarker data from a personalized nutrition platform in healthy subjects” (Scientific Reports, 2017) and “Good Research Relies on Reflexivity” (Impact Ethics, 2022). In opposition to controversial deprivation experiments on infant primates and their mothers at HMS, Erin published a widely-read opinion editorial in The Harvard Crimson, “There’s Nothing Ethical About Experimenting On Monkeys” (April, 2023). Erin holds a Master’s in the field of Biology from Harvard University DCE and a Bachelor’s with honors in Studio Art from Wesleyan University.  

V. Victoria Shroff, KC

is the first animal law lawyer in Canada to be appointed King’s Counsel/K.C. She is credited as one of Canada’s first and longest serving animal law lawyers and the longest serving in Western Canada. Shroff is author of a new textbook referred to as a “capacious and compelling treatise about the state of animals today,” entitled Canadian Animal Law (Lexis-Nexis, 2021). Shroff is referred to as a trailblazer for her innovative practice and her teaching of animal law. Shroff has been Adjunct Professor of animal law at UBC’s Peter A. Allard School of Law since 2016.  She created and teaches a course in animal law at Capilano University where she is faculty in the School of Legal Studies. Shroff teaches “Paws of Empathy,” her animal law program for kids which she teaches with dogs. Shroff is founding- chair of the national Canadian Animal Law Study Group. She advocates for animals to be seen and respected as sentient beings and regularly liaises with various levels of government to bring animal law issues to the foreground. Shroff spearheaded Canada’s first pro-bono animal law clinic at the Law Students Legal Advice Program. She has represented animals at all levels of court. Widely respected for her work Shroff has been nominated as a Top 25 Most Influential Lawyer in Canada five times, YWCA Women of Distinction award several times, and was awarded a prestigious SEEDS award from the International Society of Animal Rights for her pioneering work in animal law. Shroff is widely published, lectures globally and is frequently before the media about animal matters. In 2023, Shroff presented a Tedx Talk on animal sentience law. Shroff is a member honoris causa of the Paisley Irregulars. 

Virginie Simoneau-Gilbert

is currently pursuing a DPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford with the support of a Rhodes scholarship. She works under the supervision of Jeff McMahan and Alison Hills on moral behavior in nonhuman animals, such as empathy and responsiveness to norms. Prior to her DPhil studies, she completed a MA in Philosophy at the Université de Montréal under the supervision of Christian Nadeau and Valéry Giroux on animal legal personhood. Her research interests include animal ethics, practical ethics, moral theory, and legal philosophy. She is also the author or co-author of two books on the history of the animal protection movement: Que veulent les véganes? La cause animale, de Platon au mouvement antispéciste (in English: What Do Vegans Want? The Animal Cause, from Plato to the Antispecist Movement), co-written with Alexia Renard, and Au nom des animaux : l’histoire de la SPCA de Montréal (1869-2019) (in English: In the Name of Animals: the History of the Montreal SPCA (1869-2019). The latter was published for the Montreal SPCA’s 150th anniversary. 

Bill Leon Smith

is pursuing his PhD in Early American and Atlantic History at the College of William and Mary. He also serves as an editorial apprentice at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. He earned his bachelor’s degree in history from Rider University, and has spent the last five years teaching World History at Burlington Township High School, in Burlington, New Jersey. His research focuses on the development and evolution of animal ethics in the Early Modern Atlantic World, with particular emphasis on the culture of sensibility and its concomitant model of moral masculinity. His latest publication ‘Animals made Americans Human: Sentient Creatures and the Creation of Early America’s Moral Sensibility,’ is due to be published by the Journal of Animal Ethics, Vol. 2, Fall 2012. He was also recently commissioned by The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia to write an essay on ‘Animal Protection’.

Dr Roxanne Grace Sperry, PhD

is a candidate for ordination with the United Church of Canada and is pursuing a Master of Divinity at the Atlantic School of Theology.  She is the founder of the International Association of Veterinary Chaplains.  Her passion is to develop Veterinary Chaplaincy on a global scale.  Her interest is in anthrozoological bereavement of the individual and how it is expressed in our culture and the impact on society as our planet is in crisis and we encounter an unprecedented loss of animal species.  Her work as a veterinary chaplain is to give voice to and sooth disenfranchised grief for those who grieve the loss of animal life.  She is also interested in providing psycho-spiritual care for animal rights activists as they suffer when they encounter the pain of the animals they work to protect.  She is an animal rights advocate that seeks to advance animal rights and welfare through psycho-spiritual interventions to transform the heart.

Rebecca Rose Stanton

is a third year PhD student at Northumbria University, Newcastle. Her thesis explores depictions of animals and animal abuse within children’s media, particularly Disney animations. It specifically focusses on theories of social acceptance, speciesism, anthropomorphism, the uncanny valley, and animal abuse. Prior to this, Rebecca obtained an MA in English Literature and a BA in Drama with English at Loughborough University. She focussed on animal rights issues during both her MA and BA dissertations. In addition to this, she is the creator and convenor of the ‘Animals and Animation’ group within the Society for Animation Studies. Furthermore, she is a member of the Vegan Society’s Researcher Network and Campaigner Network. She has written blog posts for both the Vegan Society and the Society for Animation Studies on animal rights issues. Rebecca proudly describes herself as a committed animal rights scholar, activist, and campaigner. She has been an active member of peaceful branches of the animal rights movement for all of her teenage and adult life. This has been through involvement with grassroots organizations, such as volunteering at local animal shelters, as well as national events, such as conferences and marches.

Dr Per-Anders Svärd, PhD

is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Humanities, Education, and Social Science at Örebro University, Sweden. A long-time animal rights advocate and social activist, he has been active in the Swedish animal rights movement since the mid-90s, and served as the President and Director of Animal Rights Sweden (Djurens Rätt), Sweden’s largest animal rights organization, between 2003 and 2007. His dissertation in Political Science explored the historical emergence of modern animal welfarist discourse in Swedish politics from the middle of  the nineteenth century to World War II. Footed in Marxist, post-Marxist, and psychoanalytical theory, his research interests centres on the reproduction of speciesist ideology in political discourses.

The Revd Matthew J. Webber

is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and is currently studying Philosophy at Colorado State University. Matthew holds a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Master of Theology from Calvin Theological Seminary. Matthew has served as pastor at churches in Holland, Michigan and Timnath, Colorado. After twelve years of serving as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Matthew has stepped out from behind the pulpit to once again continue his education full-time. His emphasis in both theological and philosophical study revolves around the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals, which has previously played an important role in Matthew’s ministry and service to the Church. Matthew lives in Colorado with his wife, Nicole, and their cat, Aurora.

Rory Wilson

read international relations and politics at the University of Sheffield and, as a British Council Scholar, at the University of Hong Kong. Upon graduating in 2012, he worked for HM Civil Service as a policy advisor. He left in 2014 to pursue an interdisciplinary master’s degree at the Graduate Institute for International Development Studies, Geneva, Switzerland. His academic background is complemented by a range of practical experience working alongside nonhuman animals, including training Arab endurance horses in France and qualifying as a field guide in South Africa. He is involved in a number of animal and wildlife charities, serving as a trustee of Curlew Action and an advisor to We Are All Mammals. He is currently studying for an MPhil in conservation leadership at the University of Cambridge

Dr Miriam A. Zemanova, PhD

pursued university degrees in ecology, biological conservation, and natural resources management. Currently, she is a Research Associate at the Environmental Sciences and Humanities Institute at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland. Her main research interests include animal welfare, humane education, and the development and implementation of non-invasive methods in conservation genetics. She has given talks and written several publications on animal ethics and the 3Rs principles of responsible animal research. Dr. Zemanova is the author of the informational website https://3RsWildlife.info, which provides information about how to implement the 3Rs into studies on free-living animals.