Episode 231: The edge of sentience with Jonathan Birch
Knowing Animals
This episode features Professor Jonathan Birch of the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and Scientific Method at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Jonathan is a philosopher of science who will be best known to an animal studies audience for his work on the science of sentience. This includes his 2021 report Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans, which led to cephalopods and decapods being recognized as sentient beings in UK law. He was also one of the lead signatories of the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness. In...
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Episode 230: Animal Beauty with Samantha Vice
Knowing Animals
Knowing Animals is back! This episode features Professor Samantha Vice, a distinguished professor of philosophy at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. Samantha is probably best known for her work in the philosophy of race, including her paper ‘How Do I Live in This Strange Place?’, which explores white privilege, and has been widely discussed. In this episode, however, explore her 2023 book The Ethics of Animal Beauty, which was published by Lexington. Knowing Animals is proudly sponsored by Sydney University Press. Their Animal Publics book series has been renamed to...
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Episode 229: What are animal rights for? With Steve Cooke
Knowing Animals
Dr Steve Cooke is an Associate Professor of Political Theory in the School of History, Politics, and International Relations at the University of Leicester. His work addresses animal rights, and how we (individually and collectively) should act given that our political communities are not friendly to animals. On this episode, we talk about Steve's new book What Are Animal Rights For?, which was published in 2023 by Bristol University Press.
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Episode 228: An animal rights archive with Kim Stallwood
Knowing Animals
This episode features the independent activist and academic Kim Stallwood. After becoming involved in animal rights campaigning in the 1970s, Stallwood began archiving material relating to the movement. Much of this media is now available to researchers as part of the Kim Stallwood Archive at the British Library. In this episode, we discuss his archive and a series of blogposts about animal rights he produced for the British Library. This episode is sponsored by the newly renamed Animal Politics series at Sydney University Press. To learn more about the series, visit the Sydney University...
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Episode 227: Killing animals in shelters with Angie Pepper
Knowing Animals
Dr Angie Pepper in a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Roehampton in the UK. She works in moral and political philosophy, and has published papers on, among other topics, animals’ right to privacy, animals’ political agency, and what we owe to animals in light of climate change. In this episode, we discuss the collection The Ethics of Animal Shelters, which Angie co-edited with Valery Giroux and Kristin Voigt, including both the guidelines and recommendations in Part I of the book, and Angie’s chapter ‘Caring in Non-Ideal Conditions: Animal Rescue Organizations and Morally...
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Episode 226: New omnivorism with Christopher Bobier
Knowing Animals
On this episode of Knowing Animals, we are joined by Dr Christopher Bobier. Chris is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Saint Mary's University of Minnesota and the Associate Director of the Hendrickson Institute for Ethical Leadership. Among other things, his research concerns ethics, including lots of work on animal and food ethics. Today, we’re going to talk about his collection New Omnivorism and Strict Veganism: Critical Perspectives, especially his chapter 'New omnivore policy: Friend or foe of veganism?'. The book, which Chris co-edited with Dr Cheryl Abbate, was released in 2023...
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Episode 225: Solitary confinement of humans and animals with Delcianna J. Winders
Knowing Animals
This episode features Professor Delcianna J. Winders. Delci is an associate professor of law and the Director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law & Graduate School in the United States. Her published work addresses the law around farmed animals, slaughterhouse workers, captive wild animals, animal advocacy, animal testing, and related subjects in animal and administrative law. We talk about her 2022 paper ‘Treating Humans Worse Than Animals? Exposing a False Solitary Confinement Narrative’. This appeared in the Cambridge University Press book Carceral Logics: Human...
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Episode 224: Animals and Epistemic Injustice with Andrew Lopez
Knowing Animals
This episode features Andrew Lopez. Andrew is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Queen’s University in Canada, where he works on critical animal studies, political philosophy, feminist philosophy, and the philosophy of biology. Regular listeners to Knowing Animals will have heard his name before – he was the co-author of the excellent ‘Gendering animals’, which we discussed with Letitia Meynell a few months ago. In this episode, we discuss Andrew's paper ‘Nonhuman animals and epistemic injustice’. This was published open access (meaning it’s free to read and download) in...
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Episode 223: The Cheese Paradox with Devon Docherty
Knowing Animals
Devon Docherty is a recent graduate of the master’s programme in Human-Animal Interactions at the University of Stirling in Scotland and a tutor in Stirling’s Division of Psychology. She is also a media assistant with the British animal activist organization Surge. In this episode, we talk about her paper ‘The cheese paradox: How do vegetarians justify consuming non-meat animal products?’ This was coauthored with Dr Carol Jasper and published open access – meaning it is free to read online from anywhere in the world – in the journal Appetite.
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Episode 222: Celluloid specimens with Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa
Knowing Animals
This episode features Dr Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa. Ben is an assistant professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies at Seattle University. He works in critical animal studies, the history of science, documentary studies, and science fiction studies. In this episode, we talk about his 2023 book The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life, which was published by the University of California Press. By the way, this is an open access book – released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license – which means that anyone can read or...
info_outlineToday's guest is Jes Hooper. Jes is a PhD candidate in Anthrozoology at the University of Exeter and the Campaigns and Research Manager for Badger Trust, a British animal protection organisation. The working title of her PhD thesis is Civets in Society: Understanding the Human-Animal Interactions Within Civet Trades. She is also the founder of The Civet Project, an organisation devoted to better understanding human/civet interactions. Unsurprisingly, we're talking about civets! In particular, we’re discuss Jes’s paper ‘Cat-Poo-Chino and Captive Wildlife: Tourist Perceptions of Balinese Kopi Luwak Agrotourism’, which was published open access in the journal Society & Animals in 2022, as well as her developing research on human-civet interaction.
This episode is brought to you by AASA (the Australasian Animal Studies Association), which you can join today. It's also brought to you by the Animal Publics book series, which is published by Sydney University Press.