Podcast The Animal Turn – Season 1

Guests: Hira Jaleel is a lawyer based out of Pakistan. Hira has recently graduated with an LLM in Animal Law from Lewis & Clark Law School on a Fulbright scholarship. Hira’s LLM thesis – titled “Wildlife Protection in Pakistan – An Overview of Statutory and Case Law” – analyzed the historical development of wildlife protection laws and jurisprudence in Pakistan, the weaknesses and strengths of existing laws as well as how superior courts in Pakistan approach wildlife disputes. During her LLM, Hira interned with Animal Law Reform South Africa and was part of the Animal Law Litigation Clinic – the first and only law clinic in the US focused specifically on animal law litigation and on farmed animals. You can connect with her on Twitter (@hirajaleel) or via email (hirajaleel@gmail.com).

Paulina Siemieniec is a PhD student in the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University under the supervision of Will Kymlicka. Her research interests include animal politics, ethics and law as well as intersectional (eco)feminism and animal care theory. She is the recipient of the 2019-2020 R.S. McLaughlin Fellowship. She has presented her work at the 2019 European Association for Critical Animal Studies conference in Barcelona, Spain and at the University of Victoria for the Animals and Society Research Initiative’s 2019 Emerging Scholars Workshop in Law, Animals, and Society. She is also the coordinator of the A.P.P.L.E. reading group at Queen’s University and volunteers at Sandy Pines Wildlife Centre as part of her doctoral research project. You can connect with her via email (13ps75@queensu.ca).

Featured readings: Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders by Maneesha Deckha (forthcoming, Fall 2020), Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights written by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka; Keynote Speech by Joyce Tischler at the Animals Legal Defence Fund; and Law and Nature by David Delaney

Guest: Valéry Giroux has an academic training in law and is a doctor in philosophy. She is one of the two coordinators of the Center for research in ethics (a Quebec interuniversity center), where she does research in animal ethics. She is also an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law of University of Montreal, and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She regularly gives conferences and speaks in the media about animal rights, animal ethics and veganism. She is the author of the books Contre l’exploitation animale (L’Âge d’homme) and Le Véganisme (Puf, co-authored), both published in 2017. In the same collection as the latter, she just published another book, this one on antispeciesism

Featured readings:  The Rights of Animals and Unborn Generation (1974) by Joel Feinberg; Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism (1991) by James Rachels; Welfare, Happiness, and Ethics (1999) by L.W. Sumner; The Animal Question: Why Nonhuman Animals Deserve Human Rights (2004) by Paola Cavalieri; Zoopolis. A Political Theory of Animal Rights (2013) by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka; Animal Rights Without Liberation. Applied Ethics and Human Obligations (2012)and Sentientist Politics. A Theory of Global Inter-Species Justice (2018) by Alsadair Cochrane; Animals Do Have an Interest in Liberty (2016); Contre l’exploitation animale. Un argument pour les droits fondamentaux de tous les êtres sensibles (2017); Le Véganisme (2017) ; Les autres animaux en droit : de la reconnaissance de la sensibilité à l’octroi de la personnalité physique (2019) ; L’Antispécisme (2020) by Valéry Giroux.

Guest: 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. Find out more about him here.

Featured readings:  Inclusive Autonomy: A Theory of Freedom for Everyone by Frédéric Côté-Boudreau ; Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka; and The Secret Life of Cows by Rosamund Young

Guest: 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. You can find out more about Saskia and her work here. 

Featured readings: The Humanization of Humanitarian Law by Theodor Meron; The War Against Animals by Dinesh Wadiwel; and Beyond Animal Welfare/Warfare Law: Humanizing the war on animals and the need for complementary animal rights by Saskia Stucki (forthcoming)

Guest: 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). 

Featured readings: Animals, Equality and Democracy by Siobhan O’Sullivan, The Lives of Animals by J.M. Coetzee

Guest: Charlotte E. Blattner is a senior researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Public Law, University of Bern. She earned her PhD in international law and animal law from the University of Basel, Switzerland, as part of the doctoral program Law and Animals. From 2017-2018, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, working on animal labour as part of Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law, and Ethics (APPLE). From 2018-2020, Blattner was a  postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Law School’s Animal Law & Policy Program, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, to explore critical intersections of animal and environmental law. She is the author of Protecting Animals Within and Across Borders (2019, available open access here) and Animal Labour: A New Frontier of Interspecies Justice? (2020, coedited with Will Kymlicka and Kendra Coulter), both published by Oxford University Press. Blattner has argued several cases in court, including the “Primate Rights Case” currently pending at the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. Find out more about Charlotte here. 

Featured readings/speeches:  Protecting Animals Within and Across Borders: Extraterritorial Jurisdiction and the Challenges of Globalization by Charlotte E. Blattner, Critical Terms for Animal Studies edited by Lori Gruen featuring Kristen Stilt

Guest: Maneesha Deckha’s 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.

Featured readings/speeches:  Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders by Maneesha Deckha (forthcoming, Fall 2020), Best Actor Speech by Joaquin Phoenix / We are completely beside ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler.  

Guest: 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.

Featured readings: Pierson v. Post, the Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture written by Angela Fernandez  

Guest: Lesli Bisgould is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto and is also currently the Barrister at Legal Aid Ontario’s Clinic Resource Office where she assists caseworkers at Ontario’s community legal clinics with their complex appeals. She worked for several years at a Toronto litigation firm, then left to start her own practice in animal rights law. For ten years, she acted for individuals and organizations in a variety of animal-related cases in the first practice of its kind in Canada.  She now works in the poverty and human rights fields as well. She has argued at every level of court and has deputed before government bodies and committees at every level of government. Bisgould is the author of Introduction to Animals and the Law (2011), the first Canadian law text on the subject, and a contributor to Canadian Perspectives on Animals and the Law (2015), both published by Irwin Law. 

Featured reading: Animals and the Law by Lesli Bisgould

Guest: Kymlica 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.

Featured readings: Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights written by Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka; Animals and the Law by Lesli Bisgould; Social Membership: Animal Law Beyond the Property/Personhood Impasse by Will Kymlicka