Will Kymlicka is Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s. His current research focuses on “The Frontiers of Citizenship”, and in particular on struggles to extend norms and practices of citizenship to historically excluded groups, ranging from children and people with intellectual disabilities to indigenous peoples and animals. All of these cases challenge inherited ideas of what defines the attributes of a (good) citizen, and in much of the popular debate and academic literature, attempts to extend citizenship to these groups is often seen as somehow diluting the fundamental values of citizenship. His work disputes this view, and seeks to show how these struggles for inclusion deepen citizenship in Canada and elsewhere. His paper on “Animals and The Frontiers of Citizenship” (co-authored with Sue Donaldson) was presented as the 2013 HLA Hart Memorial Lecture at Oxford University, and has been published in the Oxford Journal of Legal Studies. 

Sue Donaldson is an independent author and researcher. She is co-author (with Will Kymlicka) of Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Her current writing is focused on expanding and deepening the book’s model of human-animal relations based in conceptions of citizenship, denizenship, and sovereignty. She is also interested in practical applications of this model, especially in relation to the rapidly expanding farmed animal sanctuary movement. Can sanctuaries be forms of ‘intentional community’ creating a space for exploring inter-species justice? Donaldson is also interested in animal rights as a political movement, and on strategies for effective advocacy based in social, political and psychological research that examines barriers to (and opportunities for) social change.

Dr. Paulina Siemieniec is an animal philosopher holding the post of Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She specializes in ethics, law, and politics. She has a PhD from the Philosophy Department at Queen’s University. Previous affiliations include a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law; ICARE, a legal education nonprofit for animal rights and ethics; and Sentient Futures. Key contributions include formulating the first theory of sexual and reproductive rights, agency, and health for animals, which she is expanding into a book; proposing ‘animal personhood’ as a new legal status for both humans and nonhumans; developing an original theory of democracy for animals that is based on accessibility and care; and initiating the legal turn in animal agency debates. Her current research sits at the intersection of AI and animals, and her most recent postdoctoral project on “Animal Care as Moral Aesthetics” is funded by a Culture and Animals Foundation research grant. More details can be found on her website.

Pablo P. Castello was the 2022-2024 Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Animal Ethics at the Department of Philosophy, Queen’s University. He completed his PhD on “The Language of Zoodemocracy” at Royal Holloway University of London in 2022, and has worked as a Research Assistant at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law. His research: (i) diagnoses why humans oppress animals; and (ii) explores the conditions and institutional mechanisms needed for animal flourishing. After his postdoc, he will work as a research fellow at the Animal Law and Policy Program at Harvard Law School. His publication record includes several peer-reviewed articles in journals such as the American Political Science Review, Biological Conservation, Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, and the Journal of International Wildlife Law and Policy. X (twitter): @PabloPCastello.

Omar Bachour completed his Ph.D. (Philosophy) at Queen’s in 2020. His dissertation, funded by a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Scholarship, focused on questions of alienation and community. In his doctoral project, he argues that any credible theory of alienation applies equally to nonhuman animals. Hence the community designed to overcome that alienation must necessarily include the latter. His other interests include the history of the Left vis-à-vis ‘the animal question’; the relation between systems of animal exploitation and global capitalism; and literary, as well as poetic, representations of animals that prefigure a human-animal community of equals.

Laure Gisie is a PhD candidate in Animal Law at Autonomous University of Barcelona. Her research focuses on hunting law and studies the legal regulation and protection of hunting dogs and wild animals. Her work is also informed by her experiences in animal protection associations. Her strong desire for justice also led her onto the path of politics and was co-president of the French Animalist Party (Parti animaliste) and was a candidate in the legislative and European elections in France. She is a member of the editorial board of DALPS Journal (Derecho Animal-Animal Legal and Policy Studies) and she is an organizing member of the Animal Law Researchers Clinic in collaboration with Derecho animal (dA).

Josh Jones is a PhD candidate in the School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University, supervised by Mick Smith. His dissertation is focused on exploring what the extinction of species means and how we (as ecological constituents) experience and understand this loss. His work engages with existentialism, the philosophy of biology, ecological feminism, and decolonial theory and ethics

Charlotte Blattner was the 2017-18 Postdoctoral Fellow in Animal Studies at Queen’s University Department of Philosophy. In 2020 she was appointed Senior Lecturer and Researcher in the Faculty of Law, University of Berne. During her postdoctoral fellowship, she examined the concept of animals as workers, and whether labour rights can provide a route towards greater legal protection, not just for companion animals, but also for animals used as commodities in agriculture, research and entertainment industries. Charlotte is currently a senior research fellow at the “Tier im Recht” Foundation in Zurich, Switzerland, and teaches at the Institute for European Studies in Basel, Switzerland. She completed a PhD summa cum laude at the intersection of international law and animal law, focusing on the extraterritorial protection of animals, as part of the doctoral program “Law and Animals: Ethics at Crossroads” at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Dr. Blattner is a former Visiting International Scholar at Lewis & Clark Law School, and has authored numerous publications in animal law, trade law, environmental law, and articles on agricultural and research policies, effective altruism, and cognitive biases in the law. (

Birte Wrage was the 2022-23 Postdoctoral Fellow in Animal Studies at Queen’s University. They completed their PhD in philosophy on morality in nonhuman animals at the Messerli Research Institute (Vetmeduni Vienna, Uni Vienna, MedUni Vienna) in 2022. Their research is situated at the intersection of philosophy of animal minds and animal ethics, aiming to recognize nonhuman animals as more-than-sentient beings. Their work has been published in Philosophical Psychology, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, and Biology & Philosophy.

Angie Pepper was the 2015-16 Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Animal Studies at Queen’s University and was appointed Lecturer in the School of Humanities at Roehampton University in 2020. Angie completed her PhD in June 2013 at the University of Sheffield on feminist approaches to global justice and the need for gender-sensitive cosmopolitanism. Her work on global justice prompted Angie to think about the problematic anthropocentrism that frames the mainstream discourse on what we owe one another globally, and what we are entitled to do with the Earth’s resources. Angie argues that we must endorse non-anthropocentric cosmopolitan approaches to global justice, which means treating all individual sentient animals as the primary units of moral concern when thinking about resource distribution, climate change, and conservation. More recently, Angie’s research has focused on the normative significance of animal agency (what animals do and why it matters) and the implications of their agency for our practices and institutions. She is especially interested in the legitimacy of practices (e.g., domestication) and institutions (e.g. pet-keeping), which systematically subordinate animals to humans. Angie’s work has been published in journals such as Philosophical Studies, Contemporary Political Theory, The Journal of Applied Philosophy, and Pacific Philosophical Quarterly. She is also co-editor, with Valéry Giroux and Kristin Voigt of The Ethics of Animal Shelters (Oxford University Press, 2023).