Our Team
Dr Sean Butler
Co-founder and Director
Dr Sean Butler has been a Fellow of St Edmund’s College since 2002; previously he worked at Shell and Nokia. He studied Law at Oxford (St Edmund Hall) and the LSE, as well as Genetics at Cambridge (CPGS) before taking his PhD in social science at Imperial College, London. He specialises in intellectual property strategy in life sciences, and technology-based start-ups. He is also CEO of Cambridge Agritech, a syndicate of investors in agritech startups. He is Director of Studies in Law at St Edmund’s, and teaches Roman Law and Animal Rights Law.
Dr Raffael Fasel
Co-founder and Executive Director
Dr Raffael N Fasel is an Affiliated Lecturer at the Cambridge Law Faculty and holds a £455,000 research grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation, for which he is affiliated with the University of Zurich. Raffael was Teaching Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies in Law at Jesus College, Cambridge, and Fellow in Law 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. 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.
Eva Bernet Kempers
Junior Research Associate Teaching Network Manager
Eva Bernet Kempers is a part-time post-doc at the Animal & Law Chair of the University of Antwerp, Belgium. Previously, she was a Visiting Researcher at the Helsinki Animal Law Centre, the Global Animal Law Project at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg, and the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law. She obtained her PhD in Law from the University of Antwerp on the concept of animal dignity. Besides pursuing academic research and assisting in the organization of the Centre’s events, Eva takes on the role of Teaching Network Manager, coordinating an international network of law lecturers who teach animal rights law at universities throughout the world.
Carolina Leiva Ilabaca
Junior Research Associate
Carolina Leiva Ilabaca is an Assistant Professor at the University Autonomous of Barcelona. Previously, she was a Visiting Researcher at the Helsinki Animal Law Centre and the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law, alongside her work as a lawyer and legal counsellor. She holds a PhD in Law from the University Autonomous of Barcelona and the University of Chile, where she explored the intersection between Criminal Law and Animal Rights Law in Chile and Spain. She continues to pursue her research in the field from a global perspective, as a Junior Research Associate at our Centre.
Carly McCann
Marketing and Public Relations Manager
Carly McCann is a creative marketing coordinator, educator, performer, and VR theatre maker with a passion for communications and storytelling. She holds Bachelor of Arts degrees in both Broadcast Journalism and Theatre Performance from the Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Fine Arts in Advanced Theatre Practice from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Carly has produced and created several creative events that have toured the UK. A dedicated teacher, Carly uses her skills in communications and drama to educate students of all ages in the creative arts.
Sabrina Stubbs
Public Relations Consultant
Sabrina Stubbs is an expert at communications and content creation, with experience across cosmetics, entertainment, and educational industries. They graduated with a Bachelor of Media Arts & Production from the University of Technology Sydney and Regent’s University London. Sabrina has an appreciation for animals, having volunteered as a zookeeper in Australia and worked for the pro-animal-welfare company Lush Cosmetics. She is also passionate about education, working as a Teaching Assistant for SEN children in London primary schools and as an adult Learning & Development Specialist for a global retail company.
Past Visiting Fellows
Sergio Dellavalle is Professor of Public Law and State Theory at the University of Turin, Italy, and was the first Visiting Fellow at our Centre in Lent and Easter 2024. His research centred on this forthcoming book ‘A Republic of Fellow Sufferers: How to Grant Rights to Nature’, which explores different strategies to justify the attribution of rights to non-human natural entities.
Past Visiting Researchers
El Jones, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics, Economics, and Canadian Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, was a Visiting Researcher at our Centre in Lent 2024. Her research was centred on police dogs and connections between race, Black feminism, and animal oppression.
Serrin Rutledge-Prior, Research Fellow with the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy, was a Visiting Researcher at our Centre in Lent 2024. Her research focused on the relationship between animal rights and rights of nature.
Michaël Lessard, SJD student at the University of Toronto, visited our Centre in Lent 2023. His research was focused on the legal recognition of animal sociability and agency, and how this could complete the ongoing legal recognition of animal sentience.
Paulina Siemieniec, PhD Candidate in the Philosophy Department at Queen’s University, visited our Centre in Lent 2023. Her research dealt with the legal rights domesticated animals should have to Sexual and Reproductive Health, including the right to agency in sexual and reproductive decision-making processes.
Katharina Braun, PhD candidate in Law at Freie Universität Berlin, visited our Centre in Lent 2022. She worked on a project that analysed whether consent or a related concept can be employed to distinguish between permissible and impermissible human-animal interactions
Carolina Leiva Ilabaca, PhD candidate in Law at the University of Chile and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, was a Visitor to our Centre in Lent 2022. Her research examined different approaches to animal subjecthood.
Ankita Shanker, PhD in Law candidate at the University of Basel, was an externally-funded visitor to the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law from April-September 2021. During her stay, she identified the content, strength, and limits of fundamental animal rights and personhood, relying on foundational principles of fundamental rights law and legal theories.
Eva Bernet Kempers, PhD candidate at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2021. Her research at the Centre focused on developing an alternative account of legal personhood that goes beyond the binary and court-based accounts that are dominant in the common law.
Joshua Jowitt, Lecturer in Law at Newcastle University, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2021. During his stay at the Centre, Josh developed a natural law account of the normative foundations of legal personhood and explored its implications in the case of Happy the elephant.
Pablo Pérez Castelló, PhD candidate in Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2021. His research explored how the constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia should change if wild animals were given a right to self-determination.
Nick Ampt, PhD candidate at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2020 as one of our two first Visiting Students. Nick pursued a research project dealing with different legal statuses that the law can award to animals and other beings.
Robyn Trigg, non-practising solicitor and full-time DPhil in Law student at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2020 as one of our two first Visiting Students. Her research probed the dualisms on which current animal laws and animal rights proposals are based.