The Animal Turn Creators & Guests

Claudia (Towne) Hirtenfelder is the founder and host of The Animal Turn. She is a PhD Candidate in Geography and Planning at Queen’s University and is currently undertaking her own research project looking at the geographical and historical relationships between animals (specifically cows) and cities.

Dr. Siobhan O’Sullivan is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She has interests in animal welfare policy and environmental ethics, and is the author of three books, including: Getting Welfare to Work (2015) and Animals, Equality and Democracy (2011). Siobhan is also well known for her podcast ‘Knowing Animals’ which you can find on the iROAR – an animal focused podcast network she launched. If you would like to find out more about Siobhan and her work, you can see a list of her publications here and you can follow her on Facebook and Twitter (@so_s).

Saskia Stucki is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. In 2018/2019, she was a visiting researcher at the Harvard Law School Animal Law & Policy Program, where she worked on her two-year postdoctoral research project “Trilogy on a Legal Theory of Animal Rights” (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation). She studied law at the University of Basel, Switzerland, where she also obtained her doctoral degree in 2015. The resulting book on “Fundamental Rights for Animals” (2016) won four awards, among other the biennial award of the Swiss Association for the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Her research interests include animal law and ethics, animal personhood and rights, legal animal studies and comparative animal welfare law, legal theory, human rights philosophy, international humanitarian law, and environmental law.

Sue Donaldson is a writer and animal advocate. She is a research associate in the Dept. of Philosophy at Queen's University, Kingston, and co-convenor of the Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics research group. She is the author of 4 books, and dozens of articles, primarily focusing on animal rights and politics. Questions of political community, political agency, and doing democracy with animals are central to her current work, and her most recent publication is "Animal Agora: Animal Citizens and the Democratic Challenge" in Social Theory and Practice.

Pattrice Jones is a co-founder of VINE Sanctuary, an LGBTQ-led farmed animal refuge that works for social and environmental justice as well as animal liberation. A former tenant organizer and antiracist educator with more than forty years of activist experience, pattrice has taught college and university courses in the theory and praxis of social change activism. As an ecofeminist scholar, pattrice lectures and publishes worldwide on the interconnections among human, animal, and ecological matters. You can also find VINE on Facebook and Twitter.

Angela Fernandez is a Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, cross-appointed to the Department of History. She 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. She is on the Board of Directors for Animal Justice Canada, a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and a member of the Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network (BASAN) with the Brooks Institute for Animal Law and Policy

Maneesha Deckha is a researcher, writer, and author.

Maneesha Deckha is Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include critical animal studies, animal law and legalities, postcolonial feminist theory, and reproductive law. She is widely published and has received multiple grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and other funding bodies. She has also held the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Law and Society at New York University. Her book project on feminism, postcolonialism and critical animal law entitled Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders is forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press. She serves as the Director of the Animal Studies Research Initiative at the University of Victoria and is a Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network Fellow.

Philosopher interested in animal ethics, politics, and food. @ShefUniPolitics postdoc, @ShefAnimals member, @Knowing_Animals host, @politicsanimals sec editor.

Nicolas Delon is Assistant Professor or philosophy and environmental studies at New College of Florida. He specializes in animal ethics, with particular interests in moral status and animal agency. He has published on these topics as well as the ethics of killing animals, urban animals, wild animal suffering, and Nietzsche, among other things. He’s currently working on a book project about animals and the moral community of persons.

Jamie Woodhouse works on developing and building global community around the Sentientism worldview: "Evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings." It's a combination of naturalism (so non-supernatural) and granting moral consideration to all beings capable of experiencing suffering. So far, that's human and non-human animals.

Jo-Anne McArthur (born December 23, 1976) is a Canadian photojournalist, humane educator, animal rights activist and author. She is known for her We Animals project, a photography project documenting human relationships with animals. Through the We Animals Humane Education program, McArthur offers presentations about human relationships with animals in educational and other environments, and through the We Animals Archive, she provides photographs and other media for those working to help animals. We Animals Media, meanwhile, is a media agency focused on human/animal relationships.McArthur was the primary subject of the 2013 documentary The Ghosts in Our Machine, directed by Liz Marshall, and with Keri Cronin, she is the founder of the Unbound Project, which aims to celebrate and recognize female animal activists. Her first book, We Animals, was published in 2013; her second, Captive, was published in 2017; and a third, Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene, which was co-authored with the journalist Keith Wilson, was published in 2020. McArthur has been awarded a range of commendations for her photography and activism, including several commendations in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards and joint first place in the COP26 photography competition.

Frédéric is a philosophy scholar who earned his PhD at Queen’s University in 2019 with a thesis entitled Inclusive Autonomy: A Theory of Freedom for Everyone. He is based in Montréal, Canada, and regularly gives talks on speciesism, veganism, the citizenship approach to animal rights, disability rights, and the convergence between social justice and animal justice. He also co-founded the Québec’s Estivales de la question animale, a summer camp where academics and activists meet to discuss issues and strategies related to animal liberation.

Siobhan Speiran is a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at Queen’s, working with Dr. Alice Hovorka and The Lives of Animals Research Group. Her research is funded by a SSHRC Bombardier Scholarship and focuses on the lives of nonhuman primates in Costa Rican sanctuaries. Her central research question is interdisciplinary, considering how sanctuaries - as sites of ecotourism - contribute to the conservation and welfare of four monkey species.

Will Kymlicka is the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s University, where he has taught since 1998. He has published eight books and over 200 articles, which have been translated into 34 languages. His books include Contemporary Political Philosophy (1990; second edition 2002), Multicultural Citizenship (1995), Multicultural Odysseys: Navigating the New International Politics of Diversity (2007), and most recently Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2011), co-authored with Sue Donaldson. He was awarded the 2019 Gold Medal from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.