We are pleased to release the Lent Term card of the Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy series. We will kick off the term on January 26th with a presentation by Professor Maneesha Deckha on the topic “Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders”. On February 4th, Eva Bernet Kempers, Visiting Student at our Centre and PhD candidate at Antwerp University, will talk about “Animals as Legal Persons: A Necessity or a Luxury? A Perspective from Continental Law”. Dr Josh Jowitt, Visiting Student at our Centre and Lecturer at Newcastle University, will deliver a paper called “The Elephant in the Room: Happy and the Normative Structure of Legal Personhood” on February 24th. Dr Angie Pepper from Roehampton University will be joining us on March 5th with a presentation on “Caring in Non-Ideal Conditions: Animal Rescue Organisations and Morally Justified Killing”. Finally, Pablo Pérez Castelló, Visiting Student at our Centre and PhD candidate at Royal Holloway University will deliver a talk on “The Recognition of Wild Animal Communities in the Australian Constitution” on March 17th. Due to the ongoing pandemic, all talks will be held on Zoom. All events are open to the public and information about how to register is available here.
A Warm Welcome to our New Visitors
We are delighted to welcome our new Visitors who will be conducting research at our Centre during Lent Term 2021: Eva Bernet Kempers, Pablo Pérez Castelló, and Joshua Jowitt. Eva is a PhD student at the University of Antwerp and will join us to develop a continental European perspective on animal personhood. Pablo is a PhD candidate at Royal Holloway University of London and will explore how Australia’s Constitution would have to change if wild animals had sovereignty. Josh is a Lecturer at Newcastle Law School and will be working on a natural law approach to legal animal rights. We will also have the pleasure of hosting Ankita Shanker who is a PhD in Law candidate at the University of Lucerne. Ankita will be joining us from April to September 2021 on a scholarship by the Swiss National Science Foundation to work on a project that attempts to identify the content, strength, and limits of fundamental animal rights and personhood. Our Visitors’ full research profiles can be accessed here.
Essay Competition 2020-21
Our Centre is pleased to announce its first Animal Rights Law Essay Competition. Our first competition title follows in the footsteps of the competition run in 1795 by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, when the question was: Anne liceat invitos in servitutem dare? (“Is it lawful to enslave the unconsenting?”). The competition was won by Thomas Clarkson, setting him on a course to become one of the leading English abolitionists. Our Centre is now inviting essays on the same question: Is it lawful to enslave the unconsenting?Three prizes will be awarded. Click here to find out more about how to participate.