Since 2010, there have been regular Animal Politics workshops in the UK in September. I attended my first in 2013, and have co-run them since 2019.
For many years, these sessions were hosted in Manchester. The MANCEPT Workshops (hosted by MANCEPT, the Manchester Centre for Political Theory, at the University of Manchester) are an important date in the diary for political theorists and political philosophers in the UK and further afield. The conference is made up of dozens of separate workshops, which can last for a few hours or three days. The Workshops were established in the 2000s as the Workshops in Political Theory at Manchester Metropolitan University, and were taken over by MANCEPT in 2011.
Questions about animals have been asked at the Workshops since its early days, including at several panels on green politics. However, starting in 2010, there were semi-regular sessions devoted to animals and politics. From 2010 to 2015, a workshop was held every year. There were a range of convenors, though both Rob Garner and Steve Cooke were (co-)convenors on several occasions. There seem to have been no animal-themed workshops from 2016-18. In 2019, I brought them back, co-convening with Eva Meijer and Angie Pepper. Animal Politics sessions then appeared on the MANCEPT Workshops timetables up to 2024, though some of them were online-only. For the 2025 session, the organisational group (by then numbering six people) ‘went independent’; we hosted our own event at the University of Leicester.
I attended my first workshop in 2013, and it was instrumental in shaping the direction of my career. More generally, these workshops have been important in establishing questions about animals as part of the political philosophy/political theory mainstream. Indeed, it may have been these workshops where the phrase ‘political turn in animal ethics’ was first used. (It is striking to note that these animal politics workshops began in 2010, which was before many of the ‘first’ books on animals and political theory were published. For example, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis was not published until 2011.)
This page serves as an archive of these workshops, a small but important part of the history of scholarship on animals and politics. The details here are as accurate as I have been able to make them. Some details have been based on provisional, rather than final, programmes, so may not precisely reflect the details of the sessions as they were actually delivered.
It is worth acknowledging that there were other important conferences on the theme of animal politics that are not truly part of this ‘series’. This includes, but is not limited to, a 2015 conference in Birmingham organized by Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade; a 2016 conference in the Netherlands organized by Eva Meijer, Janneke Vink, Floris van den Berg, Harry Wels, Joost Leuven and Erno Eskens (which coincidentally also used the ‘Animal Politics’ title); and a 2025 conference in Sheffield organized by David Holroyd, David Paaske, and Diego Teixeira.
If you spot any mistakes or have any information that may be helpful, please let me know. (In particular, if you happen to have programmes for the 2009, 2016, or 2017 Workshops, you will be able to let me know whether there were animal-themed workshops at these conferences. I know that there definitely weren’t at the 2007, 2008, or 2018 workshops, although there were green politics sessions.)
Thanks to Rob Garner, Andrew Woodhall, Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade, Alasdair Cochrane, Eva Meijer, and (especially) Steve Cooke who have helped me fill in some gaps.
2010: Political Theory and Animal Rights
In person.
Convenor: Robert Garner
Papers:
Dita Wickins-Drazilova (University of Lancaster): Kant and the perfect similarity of duties to humans and duties to animals
Steve Cooke (University of Manchester): Duties to moral patients in conflict or need: Overcoming the species boundary
Rebekah Humphreys (University of Cardiff): Contractarianism: On the incoherence of the exclusion of non human beings [Earlier version]
Christopher Nathan (University of Exeter): Species and equality
Alasdair Cochrane (London School of Economics): From Human Rights to Sentient Rights [Published version]
Mark Reardon (University of Wales, Newport): Caring about animals: Welfare or illfare [Published version?]
Laura Valentini (Queen’s College, Oxford): Canine justice: An associative account [Published version]
Elizabeth Cripps (University of Edinburgh): Justice but not as we know it? Capbilities, animals and ecosystems [Published version?]
Robert Garner (University of Leicester): Do animals need justice? [Published version?]
2011: Animal Rights and Political Theory
In person.
Convenors: Alasdair Cochrane and Robert Garner
Papers:
Steve Cooke (University of Manchester): Rescuing captive animals: Grounding the moral permissibility of animal liberation
Rob Garner (University of Leicester): Rawls, animals and justice: New literature, same response [Published version]
Martin Whiting (Royal Veterinary College): Justice, the veterinary profession and the use of animals [Published version?]
Elisa Aaltola (University of Eastern Finland): Animal activism and transformative criminalisation [Published version?]
Steve McCulloch (Royal Veterinary College): WTO: History, political legitimacy and consequences for farm animal welfare
Alasdair Cochrane (London School of Economics): Is a ‘political approach’ to animal justice necessary?
Chris Belshaw (Open University): Should the badger live?
Cheryl Abbate (Colorado State University): Research on prisoners
2012: Animals and Political Theory
In person.
Convenor: Steve Cooke (University of Manchester)
Abstract: Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Animal Rights
- Animals and Global Justice
- Animals and Democratic Theory
- Animal Liberation
- Liberalism and Animals
- Animals and Political Thought
Papers:
Les Mitchell (University of Fort Hare): Critical realism and paths to liberation
Kim Stallwood (independent): Animal eights: Moral crusade or political movement? [Published version]
Jennifer Eadie (Australian National University): Animal rights: Its advocates and misplaced representation
Tony Milligan (University of Aberdeen): Animal rescue as civil disobedience [Published version]
Nicholas Delon (Université de Picardie Jules Verne): Animals as subjects of justice within the social contract
Refik Güremen (Université Paris I-Panthéon Sorbonne): Biological perspectives on man as a political animal in Aristotle [Published version?]
Steve Cooke (University of Manchester): Perpetual strangers: Animals and the cosmopolitan right [Published version]
Arabella Fisher (University of Edinburgh): Left-Libertarian Rights for Animals?
Joseph Burke: [Unkown]
2013: The Political Turn in Animal Liberation
Primarily in person.
Convenors: Steve Cooke (University of Manchester), Tony Milligan (University of Aberdeen), Les Mitchell (University of Fort Hare)
Abstract: Recent work on animal liberation has seen a change in emphasis towards exploring how political communities should relate to non-human animals. With this in mind, abstracts are invited on the following suggested topics:
- Animals, rights, and justice
- Animals and citizenship
- Animal liberation
- Liberalism and animals
- Animals and political thought
Papers:
Tony Milligan (University of Aberdeen): The politicization of animal love [Published version]
Kurtis Boyer (Lund University): Love and speciesism
Guy Scotton (University of Western Sydney): Species and civic friendship [Published version?]
Siobhan O’Sullivan (University of Melbourne): [Unknown]
Robert Garner (University of Leicester): Welfare, rights, and nonideal theory
Les Mitchell (University of Fore Hare): The animal presence
Katherine Wayne (Queen’s University): Just flourishing: The plausibility of selective extinctionism
Alasdair Cochrane (University of Sheffield): Born in chains? The ethics of domestication [Published version]
Nico Cornell (Harvard University): Affording animals rights by abandoning wrongdoing
Andrew Woodhall (University of Birmingham): Just another animal: The problematic limitations with nonhuman citizenship and the need for a more ecocentric political animal ethic
Josh Milburn (Queen’s University Belfast): Nonhuman animals and the political philosophy of Iris Marion Young
Steve Cooke (University of Manchester): Animal kingdoms: On territorial rights for non-human animals [Published version]
2014: Animals, Disagreement and Political Agency
In person.
Convenors: Steve Cooke and Federico Zuolo
Abstract: The focus of the panel will be upon the related topics of animal rights activism and how we can theorize and respond to disagreements about the moral status of animals. Contributions by political philosophers and ethical theorists are welcome. We encourage abstracts which relate to the following (and to comparable topics):
Political Agency
- Theorizing Animal Rescue, Direct Action, Civil Disobedience and Sabotage by the Sea Shepherds, the Animal Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Victoria.
- The boundaries between activism, extremism and terrorism.
- Whether or not liberation is an appropriate goal of activism.
- Models and concepts for effective political agency.
- Animal agency and political agency.
Disagreement over the moral status of animals
- Can liberal theories of public reason address the issue of the moral status of animals?
- Can there be reasonable disagreement about the moral status of non-human animals?
- How should liberal institutions deal with disagreement about the moral status of animals?
- What kind of method, if any, should be employed to settle such disagreement?
- Is state neutrality toward this issue possible?
- Is a principled consensus on the treatment of non-human animals possible?
- Is there any place for animals in Rawls’s theory and in other liberal theories?
Papers:
Steve Cooke: Animal rights and political legitimacy
Jan Deckers, Linnea Laestadius: [Unknown]
Emma Infante: Animal activism in Spain: Some flowers growing in the desert trough the politics dialogue
Eva Meijer: Speaking for or with animals: Rethinking language and political animal agency
Alejandra Mancilla: Injustice in migration, or the case for shared sovereignty over mobile natural resources [Published version?]
Clare McCausland and Siobhan O’Sullivan: Who’s looking at you?: The legal, political and moral aspects of drones in animal activism
Clare McCausland and Siobhan O’Sullivan: Globalisation and the limits of civil disobedience
Tony Milligan: Satyagraha and Open Animal Rescue [Published version.]
Calum Miller: Do animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense? [Published version.]
Simone Pollo: Animal ethics without theories. A bottom-up view of the ethics of human/animal relations
Erich Riesen: Why it is wrong to kill merely conscious beings
Andrew Woodhall: From their perspective: Approaching the issues of nonhumans without anthropocentrism
Federico Zuolo and Giulia Bistagnino: Disagreeing about the treatment of animals. Types, levels, and nature of disagreement
2015: Intervention or Protest: Saving Nonhumans
In person.
Convenors: Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade and Andrew Woodhall
Within current political, social, and ethical debates – in academia and society – activism and how individuals should approach issues facing nonhuman animals, have become increasingly important, ‘hot’ issues. Individuals, groups, advocacy agencies, and governments have all espoused competing ideas for how we should approach nonhuman use and exploitation. Ought we proceed through liberation? Abolition? Segregation? Integration? As nonhuman liberation, welfare, and rights’ groups increasingly interconnect and identify with other ‘social justice movements’, resolutions to these questions have become increasingly entangled with questions of what justice and our ethical commitments demand on this issue, and the topic has become increasingly significant and divisive.
This workshop aims to bring together theorists to consider how this question, and contemporary issues facing nonhumans (such as experimentation, hunting, and factory farming), ought to be answered.
Questions to be asked include: ‘should the movement(s) for nonhuman animals be considered similar to other social movements, and if so what can be learned from them?’, ‘when facing nonhuman use or exploitation is protest, nonviolent resistance, active non-violent intervention, or violent intervention, the best (and most just) method?’, ‘ought we intervene in nature (for example to prevent predation), or should we ‘let them be’?’, ‘how far should we intervene, in what way(s), and by what means?’, and ‘what aim should those concerned with nonhumans strive for (e.g. liberation, integration, segregation, etc), and how could this be accomplished with how divided the movement is?’.
The overall aim of the workshop is to not only bring together new thoughts on this important topic of ‘intervention or protest’ regarding nonhumans, and to see what other social movements can contribute to these insights, but also to use this to embellish the current fledgling enquires into what the political turn in nonhuman liberation means for the specific issues nonhumans face.
Possible areas of interest are, but are not limited to:
- Intervention in nature
- Protest or intervention on behalf of nonhumans
- Violence or peaceful intervention/protest – which should we do
- Links with, and/or things that can be learned from, other social movements
- The aim of approaching nonhuman issues and how this is best to be accomplished.
Papers:
Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade and Andrew Woodhall: Saving nonhumans: Drawing the threads of a movement together [Published version]
Josh Milburn: Two and a half cheers for negative rights: Nonideal theories of justice and intervention on behalf of nonhuman animals.
Eva Meijer: Animal solidarity: From liberation to interspecies activism
Jens Tuider: Putting animals first – A call for a pragmatic and realistic turn [Published version]
Katherine Wayne, Kurtis Boyer, and Guy Scotton: Beyond complicity and denial: Animal advocacy and the right to living justly [Published version]
Jan Deckers: For the Vegan Project, and against abolitionism
Julius Kapembwa and Joshua Wells: Taking wildlife suffering seriously: Animal rights and the politics of climate change [Published version?]
Bryan Ross: Regan and the problem of the innocent attacker: Falling prey to the predation argument
Wayne Williams: And the animals show their veins… Predation, vivisection and moral innocence [Published version]
David Pearce [note: may have pulled out?]: The future of sentience
2016-18: Hiatus
2019: Just Animals? The future of the political turn in animal ethics
In-person.
Convenors: Eva Meijer (Wageningen University and Research Centre); Josh Milburn (University of York); Angie Pepper (University of Birmingham)
Abstract: In the last 15 years, there have been a series of high-profile works of political philosophy exploring animal ethics. These include Martha Nussbaum’s Frontiers of Justice, Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka’s Zoopolis, Robert Garner’s A Theory of Justice for Animals, and Kimberly Smith’s Governing Animals. This “political turn” in animal ethics has been much commented upon, and there is now a considerable literature of monographs, edited collections, special issues, articles, and reviews. There is even a dedicated journal: Politics and Animals. In a forthcoming paper discussing Alasdair Cochrane’s 2018 book Sentientist Politics in that journal, Siobhan O’Sullivan argues that that the book’s publication “points to a maturing of the field. Not so long ago it was thrilling to think that any politically trained scholar might turn their attention to animal questions. With the publication of Sentientist Politics, we see so-called political turn scholars beginning the gradual process of specialisation, with some focusing on political philosophy and others turning their attention to more applied, policy-driven puzzles.”
The political turn in animal ethics has come of age. We thus convene this panel to ask, looking forward and looking back: Where next? Questions to be explored at this panel concern practical and theoretical questions about animals in moral, political, and legal theory. They include, but are not limited to:
- New directions for the political turn in animal ethics: new disciplines, new questions, new theoretical frameworks.
- The relationship between the political and moral faces of animal ethics; bringing together moral and political thinking on animals
- Animals and real-world politics: party politics, protest and activism, legal change; applications and applicability of the political turn in animal ethics.
- The relationship of the political turn to other animal-focussed disciplines: Animal studies, critical animal studies, animal law, vegan studies, etc.
- Animals and how to do political theory: non-ideal theory, ideal theory, political realism, etc.
- Animals and other emancipatory movements: gender, race, ability, age, sexuality, indigeneity, class, future generations, environment, etc.
- Animals and political inclusion: The “wild”/domestic divide, wild-animal suffering, and other “overlooked” animals.
Papers:
Eva Meijer: The Party for the Animals and the politics of hope [Published version]
Kim Stallwood: Putting animals into politics
Robert Garner [Note: co-author Yewande Okuleye was unable to attend]: Researching the Oxford Group: An interdisciplinary odyssey [Published version]
Angela Martin: Weighing duties towards humans and animals
Angie Pepper: Caring in non-ideal conditions: Animal rescue organisations and morally justified killing [Published version]
Eze Paez: A republic for all sentients: Freedom as non-domination and nonhuman animals [Published version]
Catia Faria [note: ultimately unable to attend]: Xenozoopolis: A feminist, antinaturalistic politics for all sentient beings
Connor Kianpour: Dolphin ownerhood: An evaluation of the claims which some nonhuman animals may have to habitative noninterference [Published version]
Josh Milburn and Alasdair Cochrane: Animals, political membership and hate speech [Published version]
Steve Cooke: Befriending the butcher
Sofia Huerter: The imperative of interpretation: Speciesism and standpoint theory
Susy Pickett: Veganism, moral motivation and false consciousness [Published version]
Aadya Prasad: Social treatment of animals in language and laws
Charlotte Blattner: The five faces of animal labor
José Luis Rey Pérez: Labour rights for animals? [Published version, in Spanish]
2020: Agency, Domination, and Resistance: Animal Rights in an Unjust World
Online.
Convenors: Dr Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton); Dr Eva Meijer (Wageningen University & Research); Dr Josh Milburn (University of Sheffield)
Abstract: Since at least the 1970s, ethicists have taken seriously questions about the moral status of animals, and, since at least the 1980s, ethicists have taken seriously the possibility that animals have rights. In the 2000s and especially 2010s, however, philosophers and political theorists have started to ask recognisably political questions about human relationships with animals, in addition to the questions that have traditionally concerned moral philosophers. Some of the new questions asked by this literature concern the agency of animals: how they do exercise it in an unjust world, and how they could exercise it in a just world; but also what kinds of agency (if any) animals can exercise, and what the normative significance (if any) of such exercise is.
We propose a workshop to try to get to the bottom of such questions, which we believe underlie many of the most interesting issues currently explored by political philosophers and political theorists addressing animals: the political representation and voice of animals; animals as labourers and workers; animals as citizens or members of our political communities; animals as property and/or holders of property; differences (if any) between ‘wild’ and ‘domestic’ animals; real-world versus ideal-world theorising about animals; and more.
Bringing together scholars with a stake in the question of animal agency and those who are only beginning to address the issue, this workshop will ask questions including, but not limited to:
- What is the nature and normative significance of animal agency? Are animals political agents? Moral agents? ‘Linguistic’ agents?
- What does it mean to oppress and dominate animals? Are all instances of oppression and domination problematic? Do they all violate rights? Are they all harmful?
- Do animals resist? What is the normative significance of this? Can we and should we resist on their behalf (or with them)?
- Can animals exercise political agency? How can and should animals’ voices be heard in democratic politics, if at all? How can and should their perspectives and/or interests be represented?
- Do animals’ capacities of agency, if any, afford them new rights? To property? Democratic representation? Control over their own lives and spaces?
- What does animal agency mean for the roles that animals do and could play? For working animals? For companions? What normative significance might the agency of wild animals possess?
Papers:
Chiara Stefanoni: Conceptualising animal resistance: Questions and approaches
Eva Meijer: Wise elk: Power and animal agency
Charlotte Blattner: Animal agency and the law
Katharina Braun: Tierbefreier e.V. v. Germany: A legal perspective on animal activism and deliberative democracy
Alasdair Cochrane and Mara Daria-Cojacaru: Veganism as political solidarity [Published version]
Bernice Bovenkerk: Enabling wild animal agency through technology
Eze Paez: Wild animal suffering: The freedom-based approach [Published version]
Julius Kapembwa: Who is dominating who? The problem of predation by tribal peoples
Angie Pepper: Political animals: Community, resistance, and deliberation
Josh Milburn: Animal agricultural workers: The case of (in vitro) meat [Published version]
Zipporah Weisberg: Interspecies friendship online: Lessons and dangers
Diego Rosello: The animal condition in the human condition: Rethinking Arendt’s political theory beyond the human species [Published version]
Jasmine Gunkel: Do I really have to say ‘feed two birds with one scone’?
Andy Lamey: Equal consideration of animal resources
2021: Politics, Animals and Technology
Online.
Convenors: Angie Pepper, Eva Meijer, and Josh Milburn
Abstract: Early discourse on animal ethics concentrated primarily on questions to do with the moral status of animals and whether animals could be the bearers of moral rights. Over the last twenty years, philosophers and political theorists have started to ask recognisably political questions about human relationships with animals. However, animal ethics and animal rights – in both their traditional ‘moral’ form and their new ‘political’ form – have overlooked many questions at the intersection of animal ethics, politics, and technology. This is despite the fact that there has been an explosion of technological innovation impacting all dimensions of human-animal interaction, and despite the extensive discussion of what technology can tell us about humanity and animality from animal studies scholarship.
We propose to bring together animal ethicists to ask about the links between animals, ethics, politics, and technology. The workshop will ask and address questions including, but not necessarily limited to, the following:
- In what ways can technological innovations improve the lives of domesticated or wild animals? What objections might we have to these?
- What can (our attitudes towards) artificial intelligence tell us about (our attitude towards) animal minds? Are AI rights and animal rights natural allies?
- What ethical and political questions are raised by the presence (or otherwise) of animals in video games? On social media? In other technological ‘spaces’?
- Innovations in technology have made it possible for us to learn more about the ‘secret’ lives of animals. Do animals have a right against us monitoring them and surveilling them? Do animals have rights over data about them? Should we be concerned about the gathering, use, or distribution of data about animals?
- In what ways can animals be permissibly used in technological development? Do animals engage in their own forms of technological development? Does this have political consequences?
- How can we make technological development – or particular technological developments – more animal-friendly?
- In what ways are technology used in pro- or anti-animal activism? What ethical, legal, and political problems do these raise?
- Are our existing philosophical and normative frameworks suitable for conceptualising and addressing questions concerning animals and technology? What alternatives are there?
Papers:
Katie Prosser (University of Oxford): Is de-extinction a relation we should not create?
Austin Clyde (University of Chicago): Created in our likeness: Is open-source AI at odds with animal rights?
Nicolas Kleinschmidt (RWTH Aachen University): Can nonnhuman animals create technical artifacts?
Pablo Magaña (Pompeu Fabra University) and Eze Paez (Pompeu Fabra University): A democratic argument for animal uplifting [Published version]
Marina Moreno (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) and Adriano Mannino (Solon Center for Policy Innovation): Nonhuman animals and technopessimism
Birte Wrage (Vetmeduni Vienna) and Judith Benz-Schwarzburg (Vetmeduni Vienna): Very speak, such human, wow: Making animals talk on social media
Jo Ann Oravec (University of Wisconsin at Whitewater): Automation, transportation, and animal wellbeing: Will driverless vehicles break for squirrels?
Andrew Lopez (Queen’s University): Nonhuman animals, transportation technologies, and epistemic injustice [Published cersion]
Cheryl Abbate (University of Nevada, Las Vegas): Puurfecting cats through genetic technology? The moral requirements and limitations of feline gene editing
Serrin Rutledge-Prior (Australian National University) and Tara Ward (University of New South Wales): When the truth is offensive: Implication of R v Radunz for the future of animal advocacy in Australia
Josh Milburn (University of Sheffield): Searching for sentience [Published version]
Steve Cooke (University of Leicester): Cultured meat as a transitional step towards justice for nonhuman animals
Clare Palmer (Texas A&M University) and Bob Fischer (Texas State University): Gene drives and island rodent eradications: Conservation, ethics and animal welfare
Kyle Johannsen (Queen’s University): Veganism, gene drives, and rewilding
Jenny Isaacs (Rutgers University): Lines of flight: A techno-political ecology of Western Atlantic shorebird conservation
2022: Animal Politics: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of Multispecies Society
Hybrid.
Convenors: Angie Pepper, Eva Meijer, and Josh Milburn
Abstract: When animal ethicists dare to dream, they imagine worlds in which animals are protected from harm and welcomed as members of our societies. They can, however, be forgiven gloomy pessimism when they look at today’s world. Globally, more animals are kept in factory farms than at any other point in history. The last vestiges of untouched ‘nature’, if any exist at all, are tiny. And catastrophic climate change threatens all of us, but not least animals.
Animal ethicists – especially when informed by political theory – have done valuable work theorising multispecies utopias. But they have also done important work documenting today’s multispecies dystopias, exploring how we can move away from them. Bringing together political theorists, animal ethicists, critical animal studies scholars, and those in cognate disciplines, we propose to put this work in conversation: to place utopias next to dystopias, to put ideal theory in conversation with non-ideal theory. Bringing together political theorists, animal ethicists, critical animal studies scholars, and those in cognate disciplines, we will ask:
- What does multispecies utopia look like? What does multispecies dystopia look like?
- What makes a vision multispecies? In what sense (if any) should we want our politics to be multispecies? In what sense (if any) should we not?
- Where do we find ourselves in relation to visions of multispecies utopia or dystopia? Should we be optimistic? Pessimistic?
- What steps can we take to push towards multispecies utopia? Away from multispecies dystopia?
- What is the role of animal sanctuaries in thinking about utopia? Do sanctuaries offer an opportunity to think about what a just multispecies society might look like? Or do they reveal the limits of what we can achieve with captive animals?
- How (if at all) do animals themselves work towards utopia or dystopia? In what ways might animal agency contribute to the realisation of a multispecies utopia?
- Where do animals fit in classic studies or visions of utopia and dystopia, if at all? What is the value, for animal ethicists, of utopian theorising? Of ‘ideal theory’? Of political theory generally? Are visions of ‘zoopolis’ utopic? What does that mean?
- How can political theorising influence real-world animal politics? Or animal activism? What place does talk of utopia and dystopia have in real-world politics and activism?
- What is the role of stories, thought experiments, art, and literature in thinking about multispecies utopias and dystopias? Does animal ethics need more imagination? Do we need new genres and methods to think about and work towards multispecies futures? How can we support and promote radical political imagination?
- What can philosophical treatises of multispecies justice learn from other intellectual and cultural traditions (transhumanism, Afrofuturism, disability studies, gender studies)? How can we ensure that multispecies utopias are not dystopian from other perspectives?
Papers:
Steve Cooke (Leicester): Finding wonder in nonhuman lives
Liza Bauer (Justus Leibig University Giessen): Sharing planets, sharing lives: Practicing relationships with “livestock” animal figures in speculative fiction to deindustrialize the imagination
Eva Meijer: Political conversations with mice
Josh Milburn (Loughborough University): Animals, State, and Utopia
Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton) and Rich Healey (University College London): Against interspecies politics
Alasdair Cochrane (University of Sheffield): Are multi-species communities fantastical?
Anat Pick (University of Helsinki and Queen Mary University of London): On looking/eating well: Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow (2019) and Andrea Arnold’s Cow (2021)
pattrice jones (VINE Sanctuary): [Unknown]
Paula Arcari (Edge Hill University): ‘They don’t have to do anything to have the right to survive, to live’: Heterotopia as prefigurative interventions towards utopian hearts and minds [Published version]
Simon Coghlan (University of Melbourne) and Christine Parker (University of Melbourne): Artificial intelligence and animal futures [Published version]
Alejandra Mancilla (University of Oslo): Effective disoccupation
Billy Godfrey (Loughborough University): Images of enslaved anteaters: The case against utopian thought in animal studies
Frauke Albersmeier (Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf): Reconsidering the circumstances of interspecies justice
Sue Donaldson (Queen’s University) and Will Kymlicka (Queen’s University): Burdens of utopia
2023: Animal Politics: Peace, Conflict and Violence
Primarily in person.
Convenors: Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton); Eva Meijer (University of Amsterdam); Josh Milburn (Loughborough University)
Abstract: Animals face violence at human hands. Animals inflict violence upon each other, and sometimes upon us. And humans inflict violence upon each other to get access to animals (e.g., poaching) or to defend animals (e.g., militant activism). Constructions of animality may also lead to violence towards marginalized human groups, as intersectional thinkers have claimed. In response to these and other different forms of violence, human and nonhuman animals have engaged in practices of resistance and refusal. Though always conflictual, resistance is not always violent.
Making violence visible (e.g., Cubes of Truth) can lead to conflict and confrontation within the political community. This conflict only deepens as we try to find ways of living respectful of all animals. This necessarily involve compromise and the surrender of human interests. Thus, our relations with other animals, and our attempts to bring about social justice for humans and nonhumans, are often the source of violence, conflict, and strife.
Under the current conditions of human domination, peace seems far away. Indeed, it is hard to know what interspecies peace would look like. Pessimists worry that peaceful coexistence with nonhuman animals is not possible, while optimists look to emergent human-animal communities to show us how we might live differently. Indeed, perhaps we can achieve peace only if we learn from nonhuman animals themselves, and enable them to co-shape future relationships.
For this workshop, we will bring together scholars of animal ethics, animal politics, and cognate disciplines to explore questions of regrettable violence, desired peace, and the conflict we face in moving from one to the other.
Papers:
Chiara Stefanoni: Toward a materialist critique of violence: Challenging “slaughterhouses with glass walls” discourses in animal ethics
Wayne Williams: To the destruction of what is: Militant animal activism, agon, and the liberal misconception of democracy
Talia Shoval: Should we fight for nature? Posthumanist politics and the ethics of environmental resistance
Josh Milburn: Ethically appraising the military use of animals
Stacy Banwell: The war against nonhuman animals
Alasdair Cochrane: Contingent pacifism and animal rights
Steve Cooke (online): Can I get a witness? The ethics of witnessing in animal rights activism
Sara van Goozen: A responsibility to protect biodiversity?
Joel Joseph: What’s the harm in preventing predation?
Esther Alloun (online): Intersectionality and multispecies justice in conflict: The affective geographies, politics, and practices of shared struggles
Sarah DiMaggio: Learning from animals: “Kinning” as political resistance
Virginia Thomas: The road to peace is paved with violence: Renewed coexistence as a possible route to mutual flourishing of humans and reintroduced species
Gabriel Vidal: Superorganism, anthropocentrism, and violence: Rethinking Ecological perspectives on ethics
Yamini Narayanan (online): ‘A pilgrimage of camels’: Dairy capitalism, nomadic pastoralism, and subnational Hindutva statism in Rajastha
2024: Animals, Equality, and Democracy: Themes in Memory of Siobhan O’Sullivan
In person.
Convenors: Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton); Josh Milburn (Loughborough University); Sara Van Goozen (University of York); Matthew Wray Perry (University of British Columbia).
Abstract: Animal ethicists increasingly recognize political philosophy as offering valuable tools for thinking about interspecies relations, while political philosophers increasingly recognize questions about animals as worthy of exploration. This is, in a large part, thanks to the pioneering work of scholars championing the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics in the 2000s and 2010s – including, not least, their work convening sessions on animals and politics at the MANCEPT Workshops, which have been a regular feature of the conference since 2010.
Indeed, according to Siobhan O’Sullivan, a co-editor of the 2016 collection The Political Turn in Animal Ethics, the term ‘political turn in animal ethics’ has its origins at the MANCEPT Workshops, which she attended in 2013 and 2014. Sadly, Siobhan died of ovarian cancer in 2023, aged 49. This represented a significant loss to the ‘animal politics’ community, as well as the broader world of animal studies.
Borrowing our title from Siobhan’s pioneering 2011 book, we invite abstract for a panel on ‘Animals, Equality, and Democracy’ open to all scholars in animal politics, from those who knew Siobhan well to those only now entering a field indelibly shaped by her contribution. These themes act as an avenue to reflect on what has been achieved and to consider the future of the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics. Welcoming scholars of political philosophy, political theory, ethics, political science, (critical) animal studies, and cognate disciplines, we invite abstracts on the following topics, all of recurring interest to Siobhan:
- Animals in liberal and democratic political thought and practice
- Animals, equality, and (anti-)speciesism
- The ethics of interspecies social relations
- The visibility of animals, and the politics of being an animal
- Ethical, legal, and political issues associated with animal activism
- The place of political theory and political science in animal ethics and animal studies, and the nature of the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics
- The role of academic work about animals in making the world more friendly to animals, and the popularization of animal studies research
- The challenges of undertaking animal studies research, and the challenges of being an animal studies scholar
Papers:
[Note that Anat Pick, Eze Paez, and Aloysius Ventham were each listed on earlier timetables, but sadly dropped out before the conference. I read Anat’s reflections aloud.]
Constanza Guajardo (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile) and Daniela Guajardo (University of Warwick): Reconciling Public Reason Liberalism with Animal Rights
Taylor Matalon (New York University): Animal Equality and Distributive Principles
Hannah Battersby (University of Manchester): Nussbaum’s Extended Capabilities Approach and the Problem of Destructive Interspecies Relations
Friderike Spang (University of Lausanne): Animals and Deliberative Institutions: The Case of Mini-Publics
Peter Niesen (University of Hamburg): Political Sufficiency for Animals: How to Make Representation Count
Pablo Perez Castello (Harvard Law School): The Fabric of Zoodemocracy: A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Zoodemocracy
Emnee van den Brandeler (University of Basel): Epistemic Responsibilities of Public Institutions in the Human-Animal Relationship.
Tobias Blasé (TU Dortmund University): Incorporating Non-Human Animals into Structural Injustice Theory
Angie Pepper (Roehampton University): Animals, Inferiority, and Abolition
Josh Milburn (Loughborough University): The Ethics of Killing (Virtual) Animals
Alasdair Cochrane (University of Sheffield): Who Elected PETA? The Informal Representation of Animals
Matt Perry (University of British Columbia) and Davide Pala (University of Manchester): The Domestic Domination of Animals: Licencing Animal Guardians
Robert Garner (Leicester University): Siobhan O’Sullivan and the Political Turn in Animal Ethics
Anat Pick (Queen Mary University of London): For Siobhan (In Praise of Liberalism)
2025: Forgotten Animals [University of Leicester]
In person.
Convenors: Alasdair Cochrane (University of Sheffield); Steve Cooke (University of Leicester); Josh Milburn (Loughborough University); Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton); Matthew Wray Perry (University of British Columbia); Sara Van Goozen (University of York).
Abstract: Historically, animals have been forgotten or ignored by political philosophy. Sometimes, it has been assumed that moral questions about animals lack a political dimension. Other times, animals’ exclusion reflects apathy about their fates. Often, why animals are excluded is unclear. Recently, this neglect has been challenged by the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics, which explores how political ideas, institutions and policies affect animals, and how they might be transformed for animals’ benefit.
The political turn has challenged the anthropocentric bias of political philosophy, forcing political theorists to notice nonhuman animals. Consequently, animal ethics is now more mainstream in political philosophy and political philosophy more mainstream in academic conversations about animals. But, while inroads have been made to extend political philosophy beyond humanity, the project of making animals visible has only just begun. As part of this project, this conference brings together political philosophers and scholars from cognate areas under the theme of ‘forgotten animals’.
We propose to discuss topics including, but not limited to:
- Political philosophers whose work offers potential for inclusion in the political turn despite not directly addressing the animals issue, or whose work on animal politics has been neglected or overlooked.
- Animals overlooked by scholars of animal politics. This might include invertebrate animals; marine animals; animals not yet born (or those long dead); or non-sentient animals.
- The exclusion of animals from established areas of inquiry, such as international political theory, the problems of political authority and legitimacy, relations of power, paternalism etc.
- Political traditions that have yet to fully grapple with questions of animal rights, including conservatism, libertarianism, communitarianism, and realism.
- Issues of philosophical method. What does inclusive animal politics look like? When are generalisations about animals problematic or even politically dangerous? How might we talk about ‘animals’ without denying the diversity and difference in the animal kingdom?
Papers:
[Note that Friederike Zenker and Emnée van den Brandeler were each listed on earlier timetables, but sadly dropped out before the conference.]
Saskia Stucki (University of Zürich): TBA
Friderike Spang (Center for Environmental and Technology Ethics, Prague): ‘Including Forgotten Animals through Democratic Innovations’
Ester Herlin-Karnell (University of Gothenburg): ‘Forgotten animals in EU law’
Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton) and Rich Healey (London School of Economics): ‘Animals, Membership, and Legitimacy’
Frauke Albersmeier (University of Münster): ‘Speciesist Entitlement as a Political Problem: Lessons from the Case of Animal Experimentation’
David Holroyd (University of Sheffield): ‘Animals, Political Theory, and the State’
Marlene Kneidinger (University of Graz): ‘Implicit Capacities in Zoopolis’ Relational Account
Matthew Wray Perry (University of British Columbia): ‘The Desubjectification of Animals’
Josh Milburn (Loughborough University): ‘War for Animals’
Chris Armstrong (University of Southampton): TBA
Sara van Goozen (University of York): TBA
Alfonso Donoso (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile): ‘Rethinking Moral and Legal Obligations in Times of Emergencies’
Antoni Mikocki (Animals Think Tank/University of Oxford): ‘Animal Political Representation as a Condition of State Legitimacy: Towards a Res publica animalium’
Steve Cooke (University of Leicester): ‘Rousseau and Other Animals’
Michelle Hawkins (?): ‘Wild Animal Justice: A Cooperation Account’ (remote)
Pablo Magaña Fernández (Trinity College Dublin): ‘Making public justification safe for animals’
Josh Milburn 