Academia

Dr. Jane Goodall DBE is an ethologist and environmentalist, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and a United Nations Messenger of Peace. Through 60 years of ground-breaking work, she has not only shown us the urgent need to protect chimpanzees from extinction; she has also redefined species conservation to include the needs of local people and the environment. Today there are 23 Jane Goodall Institutes working to support the core programmes including TACARE, two sanctuaries for orphan chimpanzees and Roots & Shoots, JGI’s environmental and humanitarian programme empowering young people of all ages to become involved in hands-on projects for their community, animals and the environment in more than 65 countries. www.janegoodall.org.uk, www.rootsnshoots.org.uk

Photo by Stuart Clarke

Donald Broom is Emeritus Professor of Animal Welfare at Cambridge University, Department of Veterinary Medicine. His research concerns scientific assessment of animal welfare, cognitive abilities of animals, ethics of animal usage and sustainable farming. He was Chairman or Vice Chairman of EU Scientific Committees on Animal Welfare 1990 – 2012. He has published 360 refereed papers and eleven books. His recent books are Sentience and Animal Welfare (CABI, 2014) Domestic Animal Behaviour and Welfare, 5th edn (CABI, 2015), a 75 page report for the European Parliament Animal Welfare in the European Union (2017) and Tourism and Animal Welfare (CABI, 2018).

John Webster is Professor Emeritus at the University of Bristol. As Chair of Animal Husbandry at Bristol he established the centre for study of animal welfare and behaviour. A founder member of the UK Farm Animal Welfare Council, he first propounded the ‘Five Freedoms’, internationally recognised as standards defining good welfare. He is a former president of the British Society of Animal Science and the Nutrition Society. His most recent book (2022) ‘Animal Welfare: Understanding Sentient Minds and why it matters’ explores how animals of the land, sea and air have developed their sentient minds to meet the special demands of their environments.

Jessica Fanzo is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food Policy and Ethics at the Johns Hopkins University. At Hopkins, she holds appointments in the Berman Institute of Bioethics, the Bloomberg School of Public Health, and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She also serves as the interim Vice Dean for Faculty Affairs at SAIS. She is the Editor-in-Chief for the Global Food Security Journal and leads on the development of the Food Systems Dashboard. From 2016-2021, Fanzo served on the Food Systems Economic Commission, the EAT-Lancet Commission, as Co-Chair of the Global Nutrition Report and Team Leader for the UN High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Systems and Nutrition. She has also held positions at Columbia University, the FAO, the UN World Food Programme, Bioversity International, and the World Agroforestry Center in Kenya. In 2021, she published her first book, Can Fixing Dinner Fix the Planet?

Peter Singer, an Australian philosopher, is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He approaches applied ethics from a secular utilitarian perspective. His book, Animal Liberation, (1975), helped to trigger the modern animal rights movement, and his other books include Practical Ethics and The Life You Can Save. In 2012 he was named a Companion of the Order of Australia for his services to philosophy and bioethics. In 2021 Peter won the Berggruen Prize, a US$1-million prize awarded by the Berggruen Institute to individuals in recognition of “major achievements in advancing ideas that shape the world.”

Ecologist and author Carl is the first Endowed Professor for Nature and Humanity at Stony Brook University and runs the not-for-profit Safina Center. His writing about the living world has won a MacArthur “genius” prize, Pew and Guggenheim Fellowships, numerous book awards and medals. He hosted the PBS series Saving the Ocean. Safina is widely published in leading magazines. His various books include the classic Song for the Blue Ocean. Beyond Words; What Animals Think and Feel was a New York Times bestseller and his most recent book, Becoming Wild, won the Nautilus gold award and was a New York Times Book of the Year.

Raj Patel is a writer, activist and academic, holding a Research professorship at the University of Texas. He has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. In 2016 he was awarded a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, and he is currently a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. He is the author of Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, and the international bestseller, The Value of Nothing. He is the co-author with Jason W. Moore of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, and with Rupa Marya of Inflamed. His award-winning documentary about climate change and the global food system is The Ants & The Grasshopper.

Photo by Sheila Menezes

Professor Martin Rees is a renowned cosmologist and astrophysicist. He was appointed Astronomer Royal in 1995 and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge in 2004 and served as President of the Royal Society from 2005-10. He was made a life peer in 2005 as Baron Rees of Ludlow and he sits in the House of Lords as a crossbencher. He also writes about wider ethical and social issues facing society and has received numerous awards including the Templeton Prize and the Isaac Newton Medal.

Joy was the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winchester from 2006-2021. She is currently a Co-Chair of the UK Climate Commission for Higher Education and Further Education and Chair of St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace. She has chaired GuildHE, the Cathedrals Group of Universities and the Church of England’s Advisory Group for the Foundation for Educational Leadership and she also chaired the University Vocational Awards Council (UVAC) for six years. She is Patron of seven charities and is a Deputy Lieutenant for Hampshire.

Passionate about all aspects of sustainability and social justice, she has particular interests in climate change, widening participation and animal welfare. Professor Carter was awarded a CBE in the New Year Honours in 2018 for services to Higher Education.

Martin W. Bloem, MD, PhD, is the inaugural Robert S. Lawrence Professor and director of the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He joined the Center in 2017, after 12 years as a senior nutrition adviser at the United Nations World Food Programme and as a Global Coordinator for the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. At the Center, he is guiding research and programs to adopt a global view of food systems problems, emphasizing the needs of undernourished, low-income populations. Hailing from the Netherlands, Martin earned his medical degree from the University of Utrecht and his doctorate in Nutritional Sciences from the University of Maastricht. His career includes posts in the Netherlands, Thailand, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Singapore and Italy. He has co-authored and co-edited seven books and more than one hundred peer-reviewed articles.

Chris van Tulleken is an infectious disease doctor at UCLH and an Associate Professor at UCL in the division of infection and immunity. His academic work primarily focuses on conflicts of interest and research integrity especially around infant nutrition. He is also a broadcaster for children and adults on BBC television and radio. He presented the 2-part series ‘The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs’ and also presented ‘Trust me, I’m a Doctor’. He’s well known for ‘Operation Ouch!’ which is an ongoing children’s TV show: https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/shows/operation-ouch.

Olivier De Schutter, LLM, PhD, is co-chair of IPES-Food and UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. He also served as UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food from 2008 until 2014 and was elected to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights from 2014 to 2020. He is a Professor at UC Louvain and at Sciences Po Paris and has also taught at the College of Europe (Natolin), as a Member of the Global Law School Faculty at New York University and as Visiting Professor at Columbia University.

He is a recipient of Belgium’s top scientific award, the Prix Francqui, for his contribution to the advancement of EU law, the theory of governance, and human rights law. He has acted on a number of occasions as an expert for the Council of Europe and for the European Union (EU). He has also served as General Secretary of the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) on the issue of globalization and human rights. His publications are in the area of international human rights and fundamental rights in the EU, with a particular emphasis on economic and social rights and on the relationship between human rights and governance.

Dr Shireen Kassam is a Consultant Haematologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at King’s College Hospital, London with a specialist interest in the treatment of lymphoma. She is also a Visiting-Professor at University of Winchester, Hampshire, where she has developed and facilitates the UK's first University-based course on plant-based nutrition.

Shireen is passionate about promoting plant-based nutrition for the prevention and reversal of chronic disease and for maintaining optimal health after treatment for cancer. In 2019 she became certified as a Lifestyle Medicine Physician and is also a CHIP facilitator.

Shireen founded Plant-Based Health Professionals UK in 2018, a non-profit, membership organisation whose mission is to provide evidence-based education on whole food plant-based nutrition. In January 2021, she co-founded and launched the UK's first regulated, plant-based, lifestyle medicine healthcare service Plant Based Health Online.

Shireen qualified as a doctor in 2000. During her training, she completed a PhD investigating the role of selenium in sensitising cancer cells to chemotherapy. Shireen has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the field of lymphoma. Her first book, Eating Plant-Based: Scientific Answers to Your Nutrition Questions, co-authored with her sister Zahra, was published in January 2022.

Dr Robert Lawrence is the Center for a Livable Future Professor Emeritus at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Professor Emeritus of Environmental Health & Engineering. Dr Lawrence is a co-founder of Physicians for Human Rights and has conducted investigations in Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas. He is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Master in the American College of Physicians, and the recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarianism Prize in 2002 and the Sedgwick Medal of the American Public Health Association in 2009.

Marion Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. Her research examines scientific and societal influences on food choice, obesity, and food safety, particularly the role of food marketing.  She is the author of six prize-winning books, among them Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health; What to Eat; Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics; and most recently Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning). She blogs almost daily at www.foodpolitics.com, and tweets at @marionnestle.

Carole is Professor Emerita of Islamic History at the University of Edinburgh and an Honorary Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2009 she was awarded the OBE for Services to Higher Education. She has written several books. In 2005 she was awarded the King Faisal International Prize in Islamic Studies, the first time this highest scholarly prize in the Arab world was given to a non-Muslim.

James Hansen is a distinguished climatologist and one of the first to alert the world to the dangers of anthropogenic (human-induced) climate change. He has been recognised for his outspoken stance on global warming issues, receiving the Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a medal from the American Meteorological Society, respecting his “clear communication of climate science in the public arena”.

Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University's Centre for Food Policy since 2002. For the last 35 years has engaged in public and academic research and debate about food policy. He was Commissioner on the UK Government’s Sustainable Development Commission (2006-11). He’s co-author of Food Policy (Oxford University Press, 2009), the Atlas of Food (Earthscan, 2008) and Food Wars (Earthscan, 2004). Ecological Public Health (Routledge) was published in 2013.

Richard Templer is the August von Hofmann Chair of Chemistry and the Director of Innovation for the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London. Over the last 8 years he has helped 65 new start-ups to raise over $1/4bn to establish their businesses and fight the causes and effect of climate change. In his role as a London Sustainable Development Commissioner he has led policy work on the development of London as a leading climate change innovation cluster. His interest in the use of plant matter to replace petroleum as a feedstock for renewable chemicals led to an abiding interest in the relationship between agricultural methods and climate change.

Martin Kemp studied Natural Sciences and Art History at Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute, London. He was Professor of the History of Art at St. Andrews and the University of Oxford. His 30+ books include, The Science of Art, The Human Animal in Western Art and Science, Leonardo da Vinci, The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man,  Christ to Coke and, more recently, Mona Lisa with Giuseppe Pallanti, Living with Leonardo, and a co-authored book on Leonardo’s Salvator Mundi.

Professor Munasinghe shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize (as Vice Chair, IPCC-AR4). He is Chairman, Munasinghe Institute for Development, Colombo; Professor of Sustainable Development, SCI, Manchester University and Distinguished Guest Professor, Peking University. He has six post-graduate degrees and several honorary doctorates. He has advised the US President’s Council on Environmental Quality, and was Senior Advisor/Manager, World Bank. He has authored 92 books and many papers.

Jennifer Jacquet is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at New York University and a Visiting Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Sciences at the University of Miami. She conducts research related to meat and dairy production and climate change, as well as related to the protection of aquatic animals.

Dr Serageldin, an Egyptian National, is Director of the Library of Alexandria and also chairs its affiliated research institutes and museums. He was educated in Egypt (BSc) and Harvard (Masters and PhD), and has held many international positions including Vice-President of the World Bank (1992-2000). He has published widely and has received many honours, including the Legion d'Honneur (France) and the Order of the Rising Sun (Japan). He has been awarded 33 Honorary Doctorates.

Julian Kinderlerer is Emeritus Professor of Intellectual Property Law at Cape Town University and was Professor of Biotechnology and Society at Delft Technology University. He is President of the European Group on Ethics that advises the European Commission, Council & Parliament on ethical issues arising from science and new technologies. He has acted as Director for Biosafety at UNEP and was a Director of the Sheffield Institute of Biotechnology Law and Ethics at Sheffield University.

Marita is an expert on Roman Law, Latin Philology, Epigraphy and Papyrology. She is Professor in the Faculty of Law at the Autonomous University of Barcelona where she teaches courses on Animal Law, Comparative Law and Global Law. She is the Director of the Postgraduate Programme: "Animals, Law and Society", is the Director of the Research Group Animales, Derecho y Sociedad and runs the web page (www.derechoanimal.info). She is Founder of the European Group of Animal Law Studies (EGALS).

Brian is an evolutionary philosopher and Director of the Center for the Story of the Universe and a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies. He wrote The Universe is a Green Dragon & co-authored The Universe Story with Thomas Berry. He presents and co-wrote with Dr Mary Evelyn Tucker the widely praised film Journey of the Universe . He has lectured widely, including at conferences sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and UNESCO.

Rattan Lal, PhD, is a Distinguished University Professor of Soil Science and is the founding Director of the CFAES Rattan Lal Center for Carbon Management and Sequestration at the Ohio State University. He has served as Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia, and Soil Physicist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Nigeria, and is Professor of Soil Science at Ohio State University (1987 to date).

Professor Lal has authored or co-authored over 1000 refereed journal articles and more than 550 book chapters; he has written and edited or co-edited more than 100 books, and has mentored 115 graduate students and 182 visiting scholars from around the world.

He holds the Chair in Soil Science and is the Goodwill Ambassador for Sustainability Issues for the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, and a member of the 2021 United Nations Food Security Summit Science Committee and Action Tracks 1 and 3. He is past President of the World Association of Soil and Water Conservation, the International Soil and Tillage Research Organization, the Soil Science Society of America, and the International Union of Soil Sciences. Dr Lal is a laureate of the GCHERA World Agriculture Prize, the Glinka World Soil Prize, the Japan Prize, the US Awasthi IFFCO Prize, the Arrell Global Food Innovation Award, the World Food Prize, and India’s Padma Shri Award.

Professor Lal has received an Honoris Causa degree from nine universities throughout Europe, USA, South America, and Asia; the Medal of Honor from UIMP, Santander, Spain (2018); the Distinguished Service Medal of the International Union of Soil Sciences (2018); and is a fellow of the five professional societies.

He is an honorary member of the Moldova Academy of Sciences and a member of the Academia Europaea. He is a recipient of the Presidential Award of the Soil Science Society of America and the IPCC-Nobel Peace Prize Certificate. The Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, named its Soil Science and Agronomy building as Rattan Lal Laboratories in 2020.

Christine is Professor of Animal Welfare at the Royal Veterinary College. Widely respected for her scientific work on animal welfare, she is the recipient of the 2001 Prince Laurent Foundation prize for equine welfare, the 2012 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare medal for outstanding achievements in animal welfare science and the 2016 EAAP medal for scientific achievement. She is a member of the Morris Animal Foundation animal welfare advisory board. She wrote and presented an acclaimed and accessible BBC Radio 4 series on animal ethics “Would you eat an alien?”

Professor Tim G. Benton leads the Environment and Society Programme at Chatham House. He joined Chatham House in 2016 as a distinguished visiting fellow, at which time he was also Dean of Strategic Research Initiatives at the University of Leeds. He served as the ‘champion’ of the UK’s Global Food Security programme, a multi-agency partnership of the UK’s public bodies with an interest in the challenges around food.

A leading advocate on food systems transformation, he has worked with a range of national governments, the EU, G20 and leading businesses and civil society organisations. He was an author of the IPCC’s Special Report on Food, Land and Climate (2019), and the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment (2017, 2022).

He has published more than 200 academic papers, many tackling how systems respond to environmental change. His work on sustainability leadership has been recognized with an honorary fellowship of the UK’s Society for the Environment, and a doctorate honoris causa from the Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium. He also remains a (part time) Research Professor at the University of Leeds.

Marc is a former Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado. With Jane Goodall he founded Ethologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Awards for his research include the Exemplar Award from the Animal Behaviour Society and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His books include the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare. In 2005 Marc received The Bank One Faculty Community Service Award for his work with children, senior citizens, and prisoners.

Dave Goulson is Professor of Biology at the University of Sussex. He studies the ecology and conservation of bumblebees, and has published over 270 scientific papers on bees and other insects. In 2006 he founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, a membership-based charity in the UK which now has 12,000 members, and has helped to create over 1,000 hectares of flower-rich habitat for bees. He is also author of the amazing books: A Sting in the tale, A Buzz in the Meadow, and Bee Quest.

Professor Tozzi is leads Research at the Italian National Research Council. From 2006-11 he was President of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park. He is a member of WWF's Scientific Council. He has hosted many popular scientific documentaries on TV. He writes for La Stampa, one of the most important Italian newspapers, and for Vanity Fair and Natura. He has collaborated with National Geographic and is author of numerous books both academic and popular/educational/instructive.

Clive Phillips is Foundation Professor of Animal Welfare at the University of Queensland, where he directs the Centre for Animal Welfare and Ethics in the vet school. He is well known for raising concerns about the rapidly intensifying global animal trade, the subject of his recent book, The Animal Trade (CABI, 2015). Other books include The Welfare of Animals - the Silent Majority, Principles of Cattle Production, Cattle Behaviour and Welfare, and Animal Welfare in Australia. He has also authored over 300 journal articles. In 2012 Clive was awarded the Australian Museum prize for scientific research for the protection of animals.

Marian is the widely respected Professor of Animal Behaviour at the University of Oxford, Department of Zoology and has a long-standing research interest in the welfare of farm animals, particularly poultry. Books include: Through Our Eyes Only? The Search for Animal Consciousness (1993), Why Animals Matter: Animal Consciousness, Animal Welfare and Human Well-being (2012) and, (with Aubrey Manning) An Introduction to Animal Behaviour (6th edition 2012).

Dr Cai Chunhong is a researcher in the economics department of the Chinese Academy of Governance and is a distinguished researcher of the Law Institute at China's North-West University of Politics and Law. She has a doctorate in Economics and is a public policy research expert. She is also a master of law and an expert on animal protection legislation. She volunteers as a public service animal protection lawyer, taking on legal cases to protect the welfare of animals.

Maureen E. Raymo is a pioneer in the study of climate change over Earth’s history and is the first woman to lead the world-renowned Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University.  Raymo was also the first woman to win the Wollaston Medal, the highest award of the Geological Society of London, and her research illuminates how climate change will impact future sea level and ice sheet stability.  A passionate advocate for conservation, she founded  HoldTheBeef.org, a student-led project investigating the impact of beef consumption on the environment.

Jaideep Prabhu is Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian Business and Enterprise and Director of the Centre for India and Global Business at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. His research interests are in marketing, innovation and international strategy and business. He is the co-author of Jugaad Innovation: Think Frugal, Be Flexible, Generate Breakthrough Growth, described by the Economist as “the most comprehensive book yet” on the subject of frugal innovation.

John Vandermeer is Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. He has been a visiting professor in Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Holland, and Italy. His published work ranges from theoretical ecology to biodiversity issues to ethics and values in science. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems and blogs on issues such as the history and philosophy of science, capitalism and sustainable food systems.

Professor Post is a medical doctor who has been a professor at the universities of Utrecht, Harvard, Dartmouth College, Eindhoven and Maastricht. He researches the engineering of tissues for medical applications and for food. Prof. Post has developed cultured beef from bovine stem cells in order to supplement and transform reliance on meat from livestock. The first cultured beef burger was launched in London August 2013. He has co-authored 150 papers in leading scientific journals.

Ian Duncan is Professor Emeritus and Emeritus Chair of Animal Welfare at the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada. He brings a scientific approach to solving animal welfare problems, such as “asking” farm animals what they feel about the conditions in which they live and the procedures to which they are subjected. He has published more than 170 scientific papers and 35 book chapters most of which deal with some aspect of animal welfare.

Mary Evelyn Tucker is co-director with John Grim of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. They are affiliated faculty with the Yale Center for Environmental Justice. They organized 10 conferences on World Religions and Ecology at Harvard and were series editors for the 10 resulting volumes from Harvard. Her research area is Asian religions and she co-edited Confucianism and Ecology, Buddhism and Ecology, and Hinduism and Ecology.

She has authored with Grim, Ecology and Religion (Island Press, 2014). They co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology (2017) with Willis Jenkins. They are editors for the series on Ecology and Justice from Orbis Books.

They have created six online courses in Religions and Ecology: Restoring the Earth Community, which include Indigenous religions, Western religions, and Asian religions. They also edited the books of cultural historian, Thomas Berry, including Selected Writings (Orbis 2014). They published Thomas Berry: A Biography (Columbia University Press, 2019) with Andrew Angyal.

With Brian Thomas Swimme, they created a multi-media project Journey of the Universe that includes a book (Yale, 2011), an Emmy Award winning film on PBS, a series of podcast Conversations, and free online courses from Yale/Coursera.

Tucker was a member of the Earth Charter Drafting committee and the International Earth Charter Council. She won the Inspiring Yale Teaching Award in 2015 and has been awarded 7 honorary degrees. With Grim, she has received numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture.

David is Dean of the Faculty of Business, Law and Sport at the University of Winchester & Director of the Winchester Business School, one of the first UK signatories to the UN led Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME). He co-authored Europe's leading Marketing Research text: Malhotra, N.K., Birks et al, Marketing Research, An Applied Orientation, Pearson, 2012. David continues to do marketing research, managing projects in financial institutions, retailers, local authorities and charities.

Mark Eisler is Chair in Global Farm Animal Health at the University of Bristol and has over twenty-five years' experience working in veterinary medicine in the UK and international contexts. He leads the Food Security theme within the Cabot Institute for Environmental Uncertainty, is a Board Member of the Food Security and Land Research Alliance and co-leads the Global Farm Platform, an international network created to promote sustainable grazing ruminant livestock production.

Tim Jackson is Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey and Director of the Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group (SLRG). From 2004-11 he was Economics Commissioner on the UK Sustainable Development Commission. This led to his controversial and best-selling book Prosperity without Growth – economics for a finite planet (Earthscan 2009). In addition to his academic work, Tim is an award-winning dramatist with numerous radio writing credits for the BBC.

Neil is Professor of Theology and Head of Theology, Religion and Philosophy at the University of Winchester. His research area is theology and bioethics; publications include Selfish Genes and Christian Ethics (2007), Respecting Life: Theology and Bioethics (2011) and Flourishing: Health, Disease and Bioethics in Theological Perspective (2013). He is on the Arts and Humanities Research Council Science in Culture Advisory Group and the Ethics Expert Group of the Community of Protestant Churches in Europe.

Kurt was Director of the Institute of Ethics and Catholic Social Thought at the University of Graz in Austria. He regularly taught courses in environmental and animal ethics, both at his own university and at the University of Minnesota (fall semester 2007) and Gonzaga University (academic year 2011/12). He is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and has voiced his concern about the treatment of animals in lectures and newspaper articles, on the radio and on TV.

Christine is a leading teacher and researcher of lawyers' ethics and business regulation and corporate social responsibility at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Her books include Just Lawyers on how to regulate the legal profession for justice, The Open Corporation on opening companies up to their social responsibility obligations and Explaining Compliance. She is researching and campaigning on animal welfare labelling of food in Australia and around the world.

Dr Ed Pajor is a Professor of Animal Welfare at the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. He is recognised internationally for his research in farm animal behaviour and welfare. He has served on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Animal Science and Applied Animal Behaviour Science and as the US representative to the International Society of Applied Ethology. Dr Pajor also advises numerous organizations including the McDonald's Animal Welfare Panel, the National Pork Board's Animal Welfare Committee, and Humane Farm Animal Care.

David is Co-Director of the Animal Welfare Science and Bioethics Centre at Massey University in New Zealand, the foundational centre in the five-partner OIE Collaborating Centre for Animal Welfare Science and Bioethical Analysis. He is well known internationally for his contributions to animal welfare science, applied physiology and bioethics. David is also Science Director of International Animal Welfare Consultants Limited, and has received many national and international awards.

Claus Leitzmann has a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Minnesota and did research at the University of California, (with Nobel laureate Paul Boyer) and later at the Malnutrition and Anemia Center in Thailand. He was Professor of Nutrition (developing countries) at the University of Giessen, 1978-1998. He specialises in International, Wholesome and Vegetarian Nutrition and Nutrition Ecology. He has published hundreds of papers and 30 books on various aspects of nutrition.

Dr Michael Carolan is a Professor at Colorado State University, USA, and Chair of its Department of Sociology. Some of his recent books include The Real Cost of Cheap Food (Routledge), The Sociology of Food and Agriculture (Routledge), Society and the Environment: Pragmatic Solutions to Ecological Issues (Westview Press), and Reclaiming Food Security (Routledge).

Michael Cockram is a veterinarian working in academia. He is a University Professor, holds a Chair in Animal Welfare and is the section editor for behaviour, health and welfare for an international journal of animal bioscience. He conducts research to understand how to improve animal welfare and undertakes animal welfare teaching and writing. He enjoys working with industry on animal welfare issues and in particular the application of science to develop codes of practice.

Alistair Lawrence has researched animal behaviour and welfare for close to 40 years. Over that time, he has studied a diverse range of subjects including the causes of abnormal behaviours in confined animals, the welfare of farrowing (parturient) sows, the roles of prenatal stress and genetics in health and welfare, and the economics of animal welfare. More recently he has returned to a long-standing interest in positive welfare which he studies in pigs and laboratory rats. He has taught throughout his career and believes that teaching is one of the most impactful contributions scientists can make to society. He was one of the founders of the highly respected MSc in Applied Animal Behaviour & Welfare at Edinburgh which he has taught on since it was established in the early 1990s.

Liz Stuart is First Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Winchester. She read Theology at Oxford where she got her D.Phil. She has published widely on Christian Theology, gender and sexuality. It was while teaching Liberation Theology that she first became seriously interested in animal welfare which has become a lifelong passion. She is proud to work at a University which is faith-based and values-driven and which is deeply concerned about animal welfare and sustainable development.

Anil K Gupta is a member of India’s National Innovation Council and founder of the Honey Bee Network, which has mobilised 160,000 ideas, innovations and traditional knowledge practices from common people across India. He lectures at the Indian Institute of Management and the European Business School and is a Fellow of The World Academy of Art and Science. He helped set up India’s National Innovation Foundation (NIF, 2000) and makes regular media appearances.

Kate is passionate about using adventurous journeys to help raise awareness and inspire action on our most urgent environmental issues. Her most recent ‘adventure plus’ journey The Life Cycle focused on biodiversity loss and involved cycling the length of South America on a bamboo bike she built herself. A former university lecturer, she now works fully freelance as a writer, campaigner and outdoor philosopher. Her research interests include the relationship between animal welfare and sustainability, and her book The Carbon Cycle; Crossing the Great Divide (Two Ravens Press, 2012; Rocky Mountain Books, 2013; Word Power, 2016) was shortlisted for the Banff Mountain Festival Adventure Travel Book Award. She is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She is on Twitter and Instagram as @CarbonCycleKate and her website is www.outdoorphilosophy.co.uk

Carola is Professor of Sustainable Food Systems / Nutrition Ecology at the University of Applied Science in Muenster, Germany. She specialises in a whole systems approach to sustainability in food and nutrition and maintains organic principles. She also engages with government and the food industry. She runs a consultancy advising the catering trade on sustainability issues such as organic food, reducing energy and water consumption, fair trade and employee rights.

Culum Brown did his PhD at the University of Queensland and post-docs at Cambridge, Edinburgh and the Smithsonian (Panama). He lectured in Animal Behaviour at the University of Canterbury and now has a fellowship at Macquarie University where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and is Director of Higher Degree Research. His primary research examines comparative cognition in fishes. He has editorial roles on the journals Animal Behaviour and Fish Biology.

Deborah M Jones has a doctorate in animal theology and is a Fellow of The Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She works as General Secretary to the international organisation Catholic Concern for Animals and has written books advocating the compassionate treatment of animals on religious and ethical grounds, most recently The School of Compassion: a Roman Catholic Theology of Animals (Gracewing). For relaxation she paints, plays cello in an orchestra and writes songs and plays.

Dr George Charitakis is a cardiologist and homoeopathic doctor and teaches at the University of the Aegean. He is active in the ecological movement and is outspoken on health problems resulting from ecological disasters and social problems. He was awarded the European prize of the International Association Against Painful Experiments on Animals (IAAPEA) for his work and books opposing vivisection in favour of alternative scientific methods in medical research.

David Nally is a Professor of Historic Geography at the University of Cambridge whose research interests include the history of subsistence crises, food regimes, and the role of American philanthropy in shaping global agrarian relations. His book Human Encumbrances: Political Violence and the Great Irish Famine (University of Notre Dame Press) examined the colonial dimension of famine in Ireland. Nally is also a member of Cambridge’s interdisciplinary research centre on Global Food Security and a Fellow of Jesus College. He tweets @dpnally.

Fred Steward is Professor of Innovation and Sustainability at the Policy Studies Institute, University of Westminster, and is a specialist on transformative innovation, sociotechnical networks, and sustainability transitions. He is President of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and policy advisor to a network of 6 European regions in the Climate-KIC, a key part of Horizon 2020. His did a PhD at the University of Manchester.

Eleanor Boyle is a Canadian educator and writer who is passionate about the global need to transform diets and food systems to be climate-friendly, compassionate, and healthy. She has degrees in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Food Policy. Based in Canada, she has written on animal sentience and on the pressing ecological, health, and welfare reasons for eating less meat. She is active with Global Meatless Monday, authored High Steaks: Why and How to Eat Less Meat, and writes about lessons for today from food policy and diets in WWII Britain.

Dr Lakshmi Iyer is a veterinarian by training with a postgraduate degree in Veterinary Medicine and is a well-known advocate for animal welfare in India. She works as Associate Editor for the publications of the Animal Welfare Board of India. Being deeply concerned about global hunger and poverty, she is deeply committed to promoting animal cruelty free, environmentally friendly, human welfare oriented, ethical and sustainable, humane and healthy food and lifestyle choices.

Dr Karl Gerth (www.karlgerth.com) teaches modern Chinese history at Oxford University and is the Dame Jessica Rawson fellow and tutor at Merton College. His latest book is As China Goes, So Goes the World: How Chinese Consumers are Transforming Everything, which explores the wide-ranging ramifications of China’s shift toward a market economy over the past thirty years. He has conducted research in China and Japan on the impacts of consumerism for over twenty-five years.

Liu Lang is the chairman of Beijing Small Animal Veterinary Association. He obtained his Masters degree in Clinical Veterinary Medicine from China Agriculture University. He is now serving as the director of the Beijing Companion Animal Hospital. He has worked in the field of small animal clinical veterinary service for about 20 years and is keen to promote good health and welfare of animals.

Mang Ping is a Professor at the Academy of Chinese Culture. A leading spokesperson on animal welfare and the environment, she is founding director of the Animal Protection Society and China Zoo Watch. She leads a campaign against animal performances in Beijing. She is author of Notes on Green Life and co-author of The World of the Interrelated Self and Other: Chinese Beliefs, Lives and Views of Animals. She was awarded the Pearl Award For Reverence For Life in 2006.

Paul Krause is Professor of Software Engineering in the Department of Computing, University of Surrey. He graduated in mathematics and physics from the University of Exeter and completed his PhD in Geophysics in 1980. He previously did research work at Philips Research Laboratories, Cancer Research UK and the National Physical Laboratory, UK. His research focuses on both improving the energy efficiency of the Internet, and the use of the Internet to support sustainable lifestyles.

Guo Peng is associate professor of philosophy in Shandong University. She has an M.Phil. in Philosophy from the University of Sheffield and has been a visiting scholar in Oxford University and the Jews' College at UCL. Her research areas are philosophy of language, Jewish philosophy and animal ethics. She helped start shelters for stray dogs and cats in Jinan and is deeply involved in animal rescue work and public debates and education programmes against animal cruelty in China.

Prof. Sun Jiang is Director of the Animal Protection Law Research Centre at the N/W University of Politics and Law. His interest is Environmental Protection Law and Agricultural Law. He published the first animal protection law textbook in China and recently organized animal protection debates at universities.

Professor Zhao Axing is a senior specialist on international risk prevention and management, specialising in disaster management. He is a consultant to the Clean Development Mechanism's investment project for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and an associate researcher for the Institute of Geology at the China Earthquake Administration. He is the first Chinese winner of the "Excellent Article" award given by the International Society for Natural Disasters.

Dr Alexandros Frantzis is the founder and scientific director of the Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute, a Greek scientific NGO dedicated to the research and conservation of cetaceans in Greece and the Mediterranean. In 1998, his scientific work reached international media worldwide, when he linked for the first time the use of military sonar with atypical mass strandings of cetaceans. This has led to an international conservation movement against sound pollution in the oceans.

Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad is Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University. He studied Politics, Sociology and History in India and took a doctorate in Philosophy at Oxford. He is a Senior Fellow of the Mind Life Institute, and sits on the academic advisory board of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He has worked on inter-faith dialogue with the former Archbishop of Canterbury. He has published extensively on comparative philosophy, religion and politics.

Júlia Formosinho is Professor of Early Childhood at the Catholic University of Portugal. Together with her husband João Formosinho she founded the Childhood Association which promotes the rights of children in deprived inner city areas to well being and learning. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association (EECERA) and founding member and vice president of the Latin American network on early childhood (ILADEI).

Ibrahim Özdemir is a professor of philosophy and the Founding President of Hasan Kalyoncu University in Turkey. He is Professor of Islamic Philosophy at Abo Akademi University, Finland. Dr Özdemir has a wide variety of scholarly interests and specialises in environmental ethics and environmental philosophy. His publications include The Ethical Dimension of Human Attitude Towards Nature (Insan Publications: Istanbul, 2008); Jalaluddin Rumî and Confucius: Messages and Visions for a New Century  (Tugra Books: New Jersey, 2013). In 2015, he was part of the drafting team of the Islamic Declaration for Global Climate Change, which called on the world's 1.8 billion Muslims to play an active role in combating climate change. He is a founder of the recently established Forum on Islamic Environmental Ethics, which is the first Islamic Environmental Ethics forum in the Muslim world at a university.

Award-winning historian, environmentalist and writer, Nanditha Krishna is a Professor at the University of Madras. She is Director of the C. P. Ramaswami Aiyar Foundation and CPR Environmental Education Centre, a member of the Governing Body of the Blue Cross of India, Chennai; Editor of ECONEWS and the Indian Journal of Environmental Education and publisher of the Journal of Indian History and Culture. She has written several books, including Sacred Animals of India.

Professor Puoane leads the School of Public Health at the University of the Western Cape. Her research areas include improving the hospital management of severe malnutrition and the prevention of risk factors for noncommunicable and chronic diseases, especially in light of the growing obesity crisis. Professor Puoane has urged several interventions to reduce these risk factors and for attention to be given to the labelling of animal-derived foods as to content and production methods.

Dr Marco Springmann is a senior researcher at the University of Oxford. His area of expertise is on environmental sustainability and public health in the Nuffield Department of Population Health and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food. Using systems models, he has done valuable work on the health, environmental, and economic dimensions of global food systems. He regularly provides input to high-level and policy relevant reports, including those of the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems and the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition. In addition he often speaks at both academic conferences and public events.

Beatrice Okyere-Manu is a Professor of Applied Ethics in the School of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She is the Programme Director for Applied Ethics. Her research interests include Environmental Ethics, Ethics of Technology, and African Ethics.

Beatrice brings together practical experience in community involvement with theoretical scholarship on African ethics. Her edited and co-edited books include: Intersecting African Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Western Knowledge Systems: Moral Convergence and Divergence (2018); African Values, Ethics, and Technology: Questions, Issues, and Approaches (2021), published by Palgrave MacMillan; and Development Ethics: an African Perspective (2023), published by Springer.

She received the Staff Excellence Award in 2018 for being among the top 10 supervisors and in 2019 another award for being among the top 30 Most Published Researchers in Humanities at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

A founding member and Fellow of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, Michael Greger, MD, is a physician, New York Times bestselling author, and internationally recognized speaker on nutrition. He has videos on more than 2,000 health topics freely available at NutritionFacts.org. Dr. Greger has lectured at the Conference on World Affairs, testified before Congress, and was an expert witness in the defence of Oprah Winfrey in the infamous “meat defamation” trial. He is a graduate of Cornell University School of Agriculture and Tufts University School of Medicine. Three of his recent books—How Not to Die (with over a million copies sold), the How Not to Die Cookbook, and How Not to Diet all became instant New York Times Best Sellers. His latest two books, How to Survive a Pandemic and the How Not to Diet Cookbook, were released in 2020. All proceeds he receives from the sales of his books go to charity.

Jeffrey Masson is a writer of some 27 books, many of them about animal emotions, including When Elephants Weep and The Pig Who Sang to the Moon. He was a psychoanalyst, director of the Freud Archives, and a former professor of Sanskrit. He lives in Sydney with his wife Leila, a paediatrician. One son is studying in Melbourne and the other works at the European Commission in Brussels.

Bina Agarwal is Professor of Development Economics and Environment at Manchester University and was previously Professor of Economics at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi. Her books include the award-winning A Field of One’s Own: Gender and Land Rights in South Asia, and Gender and Green Governance. In 2008, she received a Padma Shri from the President of India, and in 2010 the Leontief Prize from Tufts University “for broadening the frontiers of economic thought”.

Jonathan Balcombe has a PhD in ethology from the University of Tennessee. He has published over 50 scientific papers on animal behaviour and animal protection. He is the author of four books, including: What a Fish Knows (available in 12 foreign editions), Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, and The Exultant Ark. He is currently writing a book about the lives of flies. Balcombe serves as an Associate Editor for The Editorial Department, and for the journal Animal Sentience. He also teaches an online course in Animal Sentience for the Viridis Graduate Institute.

Paulo is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Lisbon. He is a founder and President of the Portuguese Buddhist Union and Co-founder and President of the National Board of PAN - Partido pelos Animais e pela Natureza (the Portuguese political Party for Animals and Nature). He is the author of the Manifesto-Movement for Culture and the Charter for Universal Compassion (2013) and has published widely on culture and compassion.

Roberto is Associate Professor in Social Determinants of Global Health, University of California Davis. He has worked for UN institutes, belongs to the UK Economic and Social Research Council Peer Review College & is on the steering group of "Wellbeing and Happiness: A New Development Paradigm," a global initiative of the Alliance for Sustainable Prosperity. His book, "Progress or Collapse: The Crises of Market Greed," (Routledge 2013), is a wakeup call on the converging crises of neoliberal globalization and global economic development.

Steve is a professor at two Australian universities and a thought leader in spatial economics. His publications focus on applied ethics, knowledge systems, human capital, innovation, environmental sustainability and trans-species learning. Steve and his wife run a wildlife recovery and research centre for severely injured native mammals. He is founder and president of the newly formed Animal Justice Party of Australia - Australia's only political party devoted to animal well-being.

João Formosinho is President of the Childhood Association, promoting inter-cultural education in deprived city areas. He is Director of the Postgraduate Programme in Early Childhood Education at the Catholic University and President of the National Board for Accreditation of In-service Teacher Education in Portugal. He has published widely on educational policy, early childhood and teacher education and was awarded the honorific Portuguese National Order of Public Instruction in 2009.

Mark is a marine biologist/environmental scientist focused on the factors impacting marine mammals, such as chemical and noise pollution and the threat posed by climate change. Currently the Senior Marine Scientist for Humane Society International, he is the author/co-author of over 200 scientific papers, reports & articles. His most recent book is Whales and Dolphins: Cognition, Culture, Conservation and Human Impacts (Earthscan 2011). In 2013 he was awarded an OBE for his work.

Dr. Brian Hare is associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University and a member of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, part of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard, founded the Hominoid Psychology Research Group while at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and founded the Duke Canine Cognition Center at Duke University. In 2007 Smithsonian magazine named him one of the top 37 U.S. scientists under 36.

Vladimir is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, where he is studying play and social behaviour and the evolution of complex behaviour in animals, with a focus on crocodilians. He has travelled widely researching animal behaviour and has many publications to his credit. His most recent book is Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations (Arcade Publishing 2013).

Charles Patterson gained his Ph.D. from Columbia University and is a teacher, historian, therapist, editor, and award-winning author of ten books. He lives in New York City where he has taught courses in history, literature, and writing at several universities. His books include The Civil Rights Movement, From Buchenwald to Carnegie Hall, The Oxford 50th Anniversary Book of the United Nations, and Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust (now in 15 languages).

Graeme is an agricultural scientist with a PhD from the University of Western Australia (UWA) and has worked in Scotland and France. He works mainly on how environmental factors influence reproduction in livestock. He believes in 'clean, green and ethical' management of farm animals. He has published over 270 journal papers & his work has frequently featured in mass media. He has established 'UWA Future Farm 2050', a major project with the vision: An Ideal Farm for 2050 - Do It Now.

Dr Weihua Chu is an associate Professor in China Pharmaceutical University. His major is Preventative Veterinary Medicine (Veterinary Microbiology and immunology). His research focus is on the mechanism of veterinary pathogens, how to detect the pathogens quickly using immunological and molecular methods and to find new biocontrol methods such as probiotics to be used in animal husbandry instead of antibiotics.

Ros Draper was Senior Clinical Lecturer at the Tavistock Clinic and the Institute of Family Therapy in London. She co-founded the Systemic Thinking and Practice Book Series and her title Teaching Family Therapy is a key text in the field. She has developed ways of working systemically in primary care, education and eating disorder services. Until 2007 Ros chaired the Institute of Family Therapy and Birkbeck College MSc in 'A Systemic Approach to Management, Coaching and Consultation'.

Dr Birgitta Wahlberg teaches in the Department of Law at Abo Akademi University in Finland. A specialist in animal law and founder of the internet-based publication Global Journal of Animal Law. She is also a member of the steering committee of the Global Animal Law project, member of the Educational Group of Animal Law Studies and chairman of the Finnish Animal Rights Lawyers Society (national group of the Nonhuman Rights Project). She says, "We need to change our thinking and the law concerning animals at a fundamental level – and to be brave and united as we go."

Sotirios Prapas MD, Ph.D., FECTS, is a cardiothoracic surgeon, founder and Director of the cardiothoracic unit at Henry Dunant Hospital in Athens. He is known worldwide for his pioneering work in coronary surgery using his own techniques, the π-graft and "Prapas procedure". He is Vice Chancellor of the World Society of Cardiothoracic Surgeons and Founder and Chancellor of the Eurasian Bridge Association & has over 50 publications and 120 presentations at international congresses.

Richard invented the term speciesism in 1970 and later the ethical theory of painism. He campaigned successfully, with others in the UK, to stop otter hunting, pass the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 and EU laws to protect laboratory, farm and wild animals. A long term Council member and former Chairman of the RSPCA, he helped found Eurogroup for Animals and achieve the Hunting Act 2004 and the Animal Welfare Act 2006. He was also Mellon Professor at Tulane University.

Dan Brook, Ph.D. teaches sociology at San Jose State University, is a Board member of San Francisco Veg Society, an Advisory Board member of Jewish Veg, and edited the non-profit vegetarian cookbook Justice in the Kitchen.

Andrew Rowan was born in Zimbabwe, spent a few (young) years on Tristan da Cunha. He graduated from the University of Cape Town (BSc) and Oxford (DPhil in Biochemistry). He has worked in academia (Tufts University, 1983-1997) and the animal protection movement since 1976.  He spent 20 years as the CEO of Humane Society International. He is now President of WellBeing International.  He is author of numerous scientific publications and was the Founding Editor of Anthrozoös in 1987. He launched Animal Sentience, an online open peer commentary journal, in 2015.

Jan Willem Erisman is CEO of the Louis Bolk Institute, which researches sustainable agriculture, nutrition and health. He is extraordinary professor in Integrated Nitrogen studies at the VU Free University in Amsterdam. His research focuses on atmosphere - biosphere exchange of gases related to acidification, eutrophication & climate change. His aim is to optimise food production & energy use while minimising the environmental, climate and human health impacts from nitrogen cycling.

Dr Richardson is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford and the founder of Food and Behaviour Research (FAB). She has published over 80 scientific papers, particularly on the links between nutrition and brain development and the genetics of neurodevelopmental disorders. Her book, They Are What You Feed Them, explains how and why children's diets can affect their behaviour, learning and mood. She works closely with autism, dyspraxia and dyslexia charities.

Having become a Doctor of Law (J.D.) from the University of Zurich, with a thesis on animal welfare and rights, Antoine now lectures in the University's Law Department. He is dedicated to animal issues and helped get the "Würde der Kreatur" (dignity of creation) paragraph in Switzerland's Federal Constitution (1992). He is widely published, most recently "Tiere klagen an" (S. Fischer/Scherz-Verlag, 2012). He has set up the Global Animal Law project, to co-ordinate lobbying for animals globally.

Dr S. Abdul Rahman is a retired Professor of Veterinary Parasitology and Dean of Bangalore Veterinary College. He is the President of the Commonwealth Veterinary Association and is a member of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) Working Group on Animal Welfare. Dr Rahman is also a member of the International Advisory Council of Compassion in World Farming and is actively engaged in promoting Animal Welfare in Islamic countries.

Professor Dr. Elalfy is Head of the Department of Biological and Geological sciences in the faculty of education, at Ain Shams University in Cairo. She is a zoologist specialising in Cytogenetics. She was awarded her PhD by Manchester University in the UK. She believes strongly in the protection of animals and has co-organised several workshops on alternatives to the use of animals in education, training and experimentation.

Ben Mepham is honorary Professor in Bioethics at Nottingham University, where he was formerly Director of the Centre for Applied Bioethics. He was the Founder Executive Director of the Food Ethics Council, a member of the Government’s Biotechnology Commission, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology and Life Member of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics. Publications include the highly acclaimed Bioethics (Oxford University Press).

Andrew Knight is Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethics, and Founding Director of the University of Winchester Centre for Animal Welfare, an EBVS European and RCVS Veterinary Specialist in Animal Welfare Science, Ethics and Law, an American and New Zealand Veterinary Specialist in Animal Welfare, a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, and a Principal Fellow of Advance HE. He has published extensively on animal issues within both academic and popular media, including a series of YouTube videos. His work has attracted 14 awards and 15 research grants, including the Society for Veterinary Medical Ethics Shomer Award and the Humane Society Veterinary Medical Association Humane Achievement Award. His animal welfare interests are diverse and include the impacts on climate change of animal agriculture.

Mark Berkson, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair in the Department of Religion at Hamline University. He teaches courses in East and South Asian religions, Islam, and comparative religion. Mark received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in Religious Studies. Mark’s scholarly work has addressed topics such as Confucian and Daoist thought, death and dying, religion and non-human animals, and interfaith dialogue. He teaches a seminar: “Resources or Relatives: The Ethical Status of Non-Human Animals.” His work has been published in numerous books and journals. He has released two DVD/book lecture series with The Great Courses: “Cultural Literacy for Religion” and “Death, Dying, and the Afterlife: Lessons from World Cultures.”

John L. Esposito is University Professor, Professor of Religion and International Affairs & Islamic Studies and Founding Director of the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University. His many books include: Shariah, What Everyone Needs to Know (with N DeLong-Bas), The Future of Islam, What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam. Editor-in-Chief of Oxford Islamic Studies Online and The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World, his writings have been translated into more than 45 languages. He’s a former President of the American Academy of Religion, the Middle East Studies Association, and member of the World Economic Forum’s Council of 100 Leaders. 

Martin is the author of standard books and papers on the Art and Religion of Roman Britain and on Roman engraved gemstones. He was awarded a D.Litt. by Oxford University for his academic work. He edited the Journal of the British Archaeological Association 1985-2007 and is now a vice-president of the Association. An ordained priest in the Anglican church, his lifelong passion for animals has led to his vice-presidency of the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals, a committee member of Catholic Concern for Animals membership of the Board of the Animal Interfaith Alliance and Fellowship of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Through teaching and example, he aims to counter the speciesism to which human beings continue to be prone.

Steven Hopp has a background in the Life Sciences and has published papers on animal behaviour, bioacoustics, ornithology and more recently on sustainable agriculture. He serves on the board of Appalachian Sustainable Development and is the founder and director of the Meadowview Farmers Guild. He teaches courses on wildlife and sustainable agriculture at Emory & Henry College. He co-authored Animal, Vegetable, Miracle with Barbara Kingsolver and Camille Kingsolver.

Garry Marvin is a social anthropologist and Professor of Human-Animal Studies at the University of Roehampton in London. He has conducted research into, and published on, a variety of practices involving the engagement of humans and other animals. At present his research projects include contested cultural perceptions of wolves; the ethics and experiences of hunters; issues relating to hunting in wildlife management and conservation; debates about 'wild meat' and meat from farmed animals.

Alan McElligott is an Associate Professor in Animal Behaviour and Welfare at the Jockey Club College of Veterinary Medicine and Life Sciences, City University of Hong Kong.

Alan is a member of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour (ASAB) as a well as serving on ASAB’s Education Committee. His research has been featured in many news reports across TV, radio, newspapers and other media. His research has been the focus of two TV documentaries on farm livestock cognition and welfare: “SMART AS A GOAT” by ZED TV (France), and “INTO FARM ANIMALS’ MINDS” by ARTE TV (France/Germany).  He is an editor for Frontiers in Veterinary Sciences, Animals and Animal Sentience .His website is: https://www.alanmcelligott.co.uk

Barry is the W. R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He is passionate about working to improve our globe’s diet in a sustainable manner that creates a healthier diet with much less animal source food, more whole grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables and much less processed foods, sugary beverages and fruit juices. His work in his Global Food Research Program of UNC involves working with cities, states and countries across the globe on large-scale regulatory actions to help control the food system which is increasingly reaching all corners of the globe with processed unhealthy foods and beverages.

Alain Boissy is a senior scientist at the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment, INRAE. He has 35 years of experience in research on farm animal behaviour and welfare. His basic research focuses on the emotional and cognitive processes that condition how the animal perceives and copes with its environment. His applied research consists of promoting the social and emotional skills of animals to better adapt farming practices. He has published more than 180 scientific and technical papers and book chapters. Alain currently heads the National Reference Centre for Animal Welfare (CNR BEA https://www.cnr-bea.fr/en/), which brings together the main French research, development and teaching organizations working in the field of animal welfare.

David is Chair of Theology and Applied Sciences at the University of Aberdeen. His current research concerns the place of non-human animals in Christian doctrine and ethics. He is President of the Society for the Study of Theology and a past president of the Society for the Study of Christian Ethics. He is co-founder of CreatureKind and is Principal Investigator on an AHRC-funded project on the Christian ethics of farmed animal welfare in partnership with UK churches and Compassion in World Farming.

Robert is Visiting Professor, King’s College London. He graduated from the Woodrow Wilson School (Princeton) in 1962. In the World Bank Group, he was appointed Director-General of the Independent Evaluation Group (1992-2002) after serving in numerous other operational and corporate management positions including Vice-President, Corporate Planning and Budgeting. A former member of the United Kingdom Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact (2006-2010), he currently sits on the boards of the UK Evaluation Society and the European Evaluation Society.

Betsy is the founder and president of the Tributary Fund, which protects wildlife and their habitats in Mongolia, Bhutan and the American West, working with local people and their faiths. She has lived in Kenya where she worked for the East African Wildlife Society and she has served on the boards of several organisations, including the Sierra Club. Currently she lectures in Nature and Religion at Yellowstone Theological Institute.

Michelle is a Professor of Public Health Nutrition at ScHARR (School of Health and Related Research) at the University of Sheffield. Her research has involved working in different cultural contexts (the UK, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa), falling broadly within 4 areas of public health nutrition: Dietary change in transitioning urban cities in low and middle-income countries; migration and its impact on dietary behaviours and nutrition-related non-communicable diseases; obesity policy development; and integrating sustainability and nutrition to mitigate against climate change.

Dr Mohamed Behnassi is a Full Professor at the College of Law, Economics and Social Sciences of Agadir, Ibn Zohr University, Morocco. He is the Founder/Director of the Center for Environment, Human Security and Governance (CERES). He has been selected as Expert by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Mediterranean Experts on Climate and Environmental Change (MEDECC). He was among the lead authors of the 1st Assessment Report (MAR1): Climate and Environmental Change in the Mediterranean Basin - Current Situation and Risks for the Future (MEDECC, 2021). Dr. Behnassi has published several scientific papers in addition to 17 books and has organised several international conferences in Morocco on food security, climate change and sustainable agriculture, the proceedings of which have been published by Springer.

Bo worked at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, from 1975-2014, becoming Professor in animal hygiene and applied ethology. His research focused on the effects of housing, animal transport and slaughter on animal health, behaviour and welfare in farm animals and on developing an Animal Welfare Risk Assessment methodology. Algers was a member of European Food Safety Authority’s expert panel on Animal Health and Animal Welfare 2004-2009. He is still active in the field of farm animal welfare.

Toby is Professor of Farming and Food Science at the School of Veterinary Science, University of Bristol. His work has focused on the welfare of farm animals, and on food safety. He has over 150 published scientific papers and book chapters and has received several international awards for animal welfare. He’s acted as an adviser to the European Food Safety Authority, the UK’s Farm Animal Welfare Committee, World Horse Welfare and the Soil Association.

Amir Kassam OBE, FRSB, CBiol, PhD, is visiting professor in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading, UK, and the Moderator of the Global communication platform for the Conservation Agriculture Community of Practice (CA-CoP). He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (UK). In 2005, he was awarded an OBE for services to agriculture and to rural development.

Born in Tanzania, Kassam received his BSc (Hons) in Agriculture and PhD in Agro-ecology from the University of Reading, and MS in Irrigation from the University of California-Davis. During his career, Kassam has worked in many countries with a focus on Conservation Agriculture.

His former positions include: Chairman of the Aga Khan Foundation (UK); Interim Executive Secretary of the CGIAR Science Council; and Chairman of the Tropical Agriculture Association (UK). He has published extensively on Conservation Agriculture, and on systems agronomy, agroecology, land use and natural resources management and in land resource assessment for development planning.

Jonathan Lynch is a Professor of Plant Nutrition at Penn State University and a Chair in Root Biology at the University of Nottingham, as well as Director of the USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Climate Resilient Beans. His research focuses on developing crops with greater tolerance to drought and low soil fertility in order to improve food security in developing nations, improve agricultural sustainability in rich nations, and to mitigate the effects of global climate change.

Dr Suttajit is Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Medicine, Chiangmai University, and was Dean of the University of Phayao, Thailand, where he supervises research into the scientific benefits of plant-based diets and cancer prevention. He has published over 100 papers and books and he has received research awards from Cerebros and from the Asia-Pacific Clinical Nutrition Society. He is the Founder/President of the Thai Vegetarian Association.

Molly Anderson is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and was a Coordinating Lead Author on the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science & Technology for Development (IAASTD).  She teaches about hunger and food security, fixing food systems, and sustainability at Middlebury College in Vermont and is involved in food system planning at the state and regional scales. She has worked with Oxfam America, and at Tufts University, where she was the founding Director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Graduate Program in the School of Nutrition Science & Policy.

Andrzej Elzanowski is a vertebrate zoologist and professor at the University of Warsaw where he teaches anthro(po)zoology and bioethics. He is formerly Research Associate of National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC), and Senior Research Associate of the (US) National Research Council. While his main research is in birds, he increasingly explores the ethical implications of biology and psychology. Prof. Elzanowski has been instrumental in shaping Poland’s animal welfare legislation and continues working for the ethical treatment of animals as a member of the Board of Directors of the Polish Ethics Society.

Carrie Freeman, Professor of Communication at Georgia State University, publishes on media ethics, strategic communication for activists, environmental communication, and critical animal studies. She published  Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights in 2014. She has volunteered running animal rights and vegetarian groups and currently co-hosts animal and environmental protection shows on WRFG-Atlanta (Radio Free Georgia). In 2014 she co-authored the www.animalsandmedia.org style guide with Dr. Merskin. Her latest book, The Human Animal Earthling Identity: Shared Values Unifying Human Rights, Animal Rights, and Environmental Movements (UGA Press, 2020) was recently named “Book Most Likely to Save the Planet".

Randy Malamud is Regents’ Professor of English at Georgia State University. He is the author of 11 books, including Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity (1998), Poetic Animals and Animal Souls (2003), and An Introduction to Animals and Visual Culture (2012).  He is a patron of Freedom for Animals and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.

James Serpell holds the Marie A. Moore endowed Chair of Animal Ethics & Welfare at the School of Veterinary Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He teaches veterinary ethics and animal welfare. His research focuses on the behaviour and welfare of companion animals, the development of human attitudes to animals, and the history and impact of human-animal relationships. He has published more than 170 articles and book chapters and is the author, editor or co-editor of several books including Animals & Human Society: Changing Perspectives (1994), In the Company of Animals (1996), Companion Animals & Us (2000), and The Domestic Dog (2017).

Claire Kremen is Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She works on the nexus between sustainable agriculture, conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. She has published over 100 scientific papers. Her work includes hands-on conservation action such as developing a network of protected areas to protect Madagascar’s flora and fauna. In 2007, she was awarded the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship for her contributions to ecology, agriculture and biodiversity, and in 2013 she was elected to the California Academy of Sciences. She co-directs the Centre for Diversified Farming Systems and the Berkeley Food Institute at the University of California. She is the Field Chief Editor for Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems.

Julia is Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience (CAWR), Coventry University, which she co-established. She has 30 years’ experience in international development, focusing on organic farming and food systems, during which she undertook seminal research on petroleum-scarce food systems in Cuba in the 1990s. She is currently developing a research programme on Quantum Thinking for Agroecology, and is Vice-Chair of the Biodynamic Agriculture Association.

Zakes Mda is a South African writer, painter and composer and is a Professor in the English Department at the University of Ohio. He has won many awards, including the Amstel Playwright of the Year Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Sunday Times Fiction Prize. His novels include Ways of Dying (OUP 1995) and Black Diamond (Penguin South Africa 2009). He is a director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust in Johannesburg and loves vegan cooking.

Joey Tuminello is a philosophy instructor at Oregon State University, a program coordinator for the non-profit group Farm Forward, and an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. His research interests are at the nexus of food, animal, and environmental ethics. With Farm Forward, Joey organises the Jonathan Safran Foer Virtual Classroom Visit, an annual interactive webinar event where students from around the world dialogue with Foer on topics related to his 2009 book Eating Animals.

George Lueddeke BA MEd PhD is an educational adviser in higher and medical education and chairs the International One Health Education Task Force for the One Health Commission and the One Health Initiative.  He has held posts in higher/medical education, including Southampton University’s Faculty of Medicine. Dr Lueddeke has spoken and published widely on educational transformation, innovation and leadership. Most recently, Survival: One Health, One Planet, One Future (Routledge 2019), which recognises the fundamental interconnections among people, animals, plants and the environment. It translates the UN-2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into meaningful action at global, regional and local levels.

Kevin McConway is Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics at the Open University. His research focused on plant ecology and evolution and in statistics in the media. He had a spell as Vice-President for Academic Affairs of the Royal Statistical Society, and was lead author of a chapter on the measurement and communication of health risks from pollution in the 2017 Annual Report of the Chief Medical Officer for England. He was academic adviser to the BBC Radio Four programme ‘More or Less’ for eleven years, and worked with the Science Media Centre where he is now a Trustee and a member of the Advisory Committee. Kevin studied at Cambridge, UCL and the Open University.

Steve Ellingson is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Hamilton College, having previously taught at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago, his alma mater. His research interests are the sociology of religion, sociology of culture, social movements and collective behaviour. His current project is the rise of local food systems in central New York. His books include: To Care For Creation: The Emergence of the Religious Environmental Movement (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and The Megachurch and the Mainline: Remaking Religious Tradition in the Twenty-First Century (University of Chicago Press, 2007), which won the 2007 Distinguished Book Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Ellingson has served as book review co-editor and associate editor of the American Journal of Sociology.

Rupert Read is a Reader of philosophy at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. He specialises in Wittgenstein, philosophy of film, ecological and political philosophy. He has published extensively in these fields. Rupert previously chaired the Green House think tank, and was previously a Green Party councillor in Norwich from 2004-2011, and stood as the Green Party MP-candidate for Cambridge in 2015. In 2019 he made extensive media appearances in support of the call for the UK government to declare a Climate Emergency.

David is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Ethics at the University of Edinburgh. He researches and publishes on the ethics of farm animal welfare and advises the UK Government on this. His books include (with Rachel Muers) Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and Christian Diet. David sees the potential for religious ideas and approaches to engage with welfare science and make a strongly positive contribution to welfare. His website is www.davidgrumett.com.

Abu Sayem is an Assistant Professor in World Religions and Culture at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. As an eco-religious scholar, he works and publishes on ecological sustainability and environmental ethics especially from Islamic perspective. He was an “Erasmus Mundus Europe Asia” (EMEA)’s exchange scholar at the University of Warsaw, a visiting scholar at the University of Göttingen, a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Systematic Theology at the University of Helsinki, and a selected scholar at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Asian Cultures and Theologies (IASACT).

John McNeill is University Professor and Professor of Environmental History at Georgetown University.  He is a former president of both the American Historical Association and the American Society for Environmental History, elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and winner of the Toynbee Prize and Heineken Prize. His book, Mosquito Empires (2010), won the Beveridge Prize of the American Historical Association for the Best Book on the History of the Western Hemisphere.

Silvia Panizza is teaching and research fellow in ethics at University College Dublin, School of Philosophy. Her research addresses questions in moral philosophy and how these questions help us understand how we live with and think about other animals. Her work on these questions is inspired mostly by philosophers Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil. She is involved in outreach and public engagement activities and coordinates the Vegan Studies Network, an academic network devoted to research, teaching and sharing information and ideas about the possibility of a world without animal exploitation. 

Greta Gaard began practicing Vipassana meditation in 1995 at Common Ground Meditation Center in Minneapolis, MN.  An early proponent of ecofeminism, Gaard has written extensively to illuminate the linkages of race, gender, sexuality, species and environmental justice, publishing six books and over 90 articles on ecofeminism, including several that articulate a mindful ecofeminism. Her most recent work includes the Spring 2020 issue of BifrostOnline, and her book Critical Ecofeminism (2017).  Working as a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls since 2002, Gaard uses both mindfulness pedagogy and happiness practices in all her writing classes.

Song Tian (田松) has been a Professor in the Humanities Center, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Southern University of Science and Technology, China, since 2019 and is Director of the Center for Science and Civilization.

He has two doctorates, is a Fulbright Scholar and has been a visiting scholar at the Universities of California (Berkeley), Harvard and Cornell. He was Professor of the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science, Beijing Normal University for 15 years. He is one of the first to focus on garbage issues in China. He has published several books and is currently studying Civilization Studies, including the Construction of an Ecological Civilization.

Sheila trained as a zoologist and veterinary scientist and spent most of her academic career at the University of Bristol where she was Professor of Comparative Ophthalmology. She is a Fellow and Past-President of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and her scientific expertise encompasses comparative medicine, particularly zoonotic disease, as well as ethics and animal welfare. Sheila is increasingly preoccupied with the environmental complexities and moral consequences of the Anthropocene Epoch. 

Troy Vettese PhD is an environmental historian and a William Lyon Mackenzie King research fellow at Harvard University. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, Boston Review, N+1, Historical Materialism, Viewpoint, The New Republic and New Left Review. His first book, Half-Earth Socialism: A Manifesto to Save the Future, is co-authored with Drew Pendergrass and will be published by Verso in the summer of 2021.

Daniel Simpson is the author of The Truth of Yoga, an accessible guide to yoga history and philosophy. He teaches courses on these subjects at SOAS (University of London) and at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. In a previous career, he was a foreign correspondent, working for Reuters and the New York Times. Find out more at truthofyoga.com.

Jeff Sebo is Clinical Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, and Philosophy, and Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program at New York University. He works primarily in bioethics, animal ethics, and environmental ethics. He is author of Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves (Oxford University Press, 2022), co-author of Chimpanzee Rights (Routledge, 2018) and Food, Animals, and the Environment (Routledge, 2018). He is also on the executive committee at the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, the advisory board at the Animals in Context series at NYU Press, and the board of directors at Minding Animals International.

Dr James Dyke is an Assistant Director of the Global Systems Institute, and Programme Director of the MSc Global Sustainability Solutions at the University of Exeter. His research over the past decade has attempted to understand how the Earth system works, how humans affect it, and possible futures for humanity. Alongside his academic work he is an accomplished science writer and environmental columnist for UK and international newspapers.

Stevan Harnad, born in Hungary, 1945, currently professor of cognitive science at Université du Québec à Montréal and McGill University does research on category-learning, categorical perception and the origin of language. Former editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, and currently editor of Animal Sentience, he resigned from the Hungarian Academy of Science in protest over the government’s destruction of democracy. He is also an advocate of open access to scientific research. But his activism is devoted almost completely to trying to help put an end to the human-caused suffering of nonhuman animals.

Kathie Jenni, Ph. D., is Professor of Philosophy and Director of Human-Animal Studies at the University of Redlands in Southern California. Her teaching and writing focus on animal ethics, environmental ethics, and moral psychology. She is co-author of The Philosophy of Animal Rights: a Brief Introduction for Students and Teachers and numerous essays in ethics and social philosophy. Kathie founded the Human-Animal Studies program at the University of Redlands and has directed it for twelve years.

Amita Baviskar is a Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology & Anthropology at Ashoka University in India.  Her research and teaching address the cultural politics of environment and development in rural and urban India.

She received a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University and has been a visiting scholar at several universities including Stanford, Cornell, Yale and the University of California. She is the author of In the Belly of the River: Tribal Conflicts over Development in the Narmada Valley and Uncivil City: Ecology, Equity and the Commons in Delhi. She was awarded the 2005 Malcolm Adiseshiah Award for Distinguished Contributions to Development Studies, the 2008 VKRV Rao Prize for Social Science Research, and the 2010 Infosys Prize for Social Sciences.

Dan is Kuige Professor of Ethnology at the National Centre for Borderlands Ethnic Studies at Yunnan University. He is on the Advisory Group for the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, is an elected Board Member of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (ISSRNC), and co-founder/co-lead of the Thematic Working Group on Trans-Himalayan Environmental Humanities at Himalayan University Consortium (HUC). His research interests are environmental humanities, religion and ecology, trans-Himalayan studies, sacred landscapes, climate change and mass migration and modern Tibetan studies. His books include Mindscaping the Landscape of Tibet: Place, Memorability, Eco-aesthetics (De Gruyter 2015) and he is co-editor of Religion and Ecological Sustainability in China (Routledge 2014) and Environmental Humanities in the New Himalayas (Routledge Environmental Humanities Series 2021).

Becca Franks is a Research Scientist in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, where she studies animal behaviour, focusing on the wellbeing of aquatic organisms. With a doctoral degree in Psychology from Columbia University and a Killam Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Animal Welfare from The University of British Columbia, Franks’ work bridges diverse fields with the goal of understanding the interests, motivations, preferences, social relationships, and emotions of fish and non-fish species alike.

Assoc. Prof. Marcin Urbaniak is a cognitive scientist, working in the area of cognitive ethology, cognitive evolution and zoopsychology. He explores non-human animals' cognitive skills in a comparative light, trying to prove the convergence of complex cognitive abilities in Vertebrata, that exhibit analogous or homologous structures and processes of cognition. He also studies the evolutionary forms of consciousness, learning, and social behaviours in the animal kingdom, with particular emphasis on animal communication and cooperation, mental perception and moral intuition.

Dr Lynne Sneddon is an academic at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden and her research aims to drive the agenda for improving the welfare of fishes. Lynne obtained a Ph.D on animal behaviour, physiology and neurobiology from the University of Glasgow and subsequently held a postdoctoral position at the Roslin Institute where she was the first to characterise nociceptors (pain receptors) in a fish. Since then, Lynne has led her own laboratory and has demonstrated the capacity for pain in fishes which has led to changes in their treatment to safeguard fish welfare.

Sam Myers studies the human health impacts of accelerating disruptions to Earth’s natural systems, a field recently dubbed Planetary Health.  He is a Principal Research Scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Sam is the founding Director of the Planetary Health Alliance (www.planetaryhealthalliance.org), where he oversees a multi-institutional effort focused on understanding and quantifying the human health impacts of disrupting Earth’s natural systems and translating that understanding into resource management decisions globally. He serves as a Commissioner on the Lancet-Rockefeller Foundation Commission on Planetary Health and is a member of the Lead Expert Group of the Global Panel on Agriculture, Food Systems, and Nutrition. His awards include the Arrell Global Food Innovation Award 2018 and the Prince Albert II of Monaco—Institut Pasteur Award for research at the interface of global environmental change and human health. He is the co-editor with Howard Frumkin of Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves.

Oldřich Sklenář is a Research Fellow of the Association for International Affairs (AMO), where he is a member of the Climate team. He is concerned with energetics and greenhouse gas production. He graduated in Energy and Process Engineering from Brno University of Technology and Environmental Studies from Masaryk University. He also completed one semester at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He started his career in the energy sector as a design engineer, working for a number of organisations, including NGOs, focusing on renewables and energy management. He has spent most of his career in the area of development and production of electric machinery. As well as AMO, he is also a consultant in the Facts on Climate Change project.

Rosie explores the links between nutrition, environment and health, especially sustainable diets and food systems. She sits on the management group of the LSHTM Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health which co-ordinates interdisciplinary research relating to climate change and health. In 2020 she was on the scientific panel for the UK Climate Assembly which reported back to the UK government with policy recommendations for reaching net zero by 2050. She is currently a co-PI on two Wellcome-funded grants: the Pathfinder Initiative exploring health impacts of actions to mitigate climate change, and the FACE-Africa project exploring food system adaptations to climate change in The Gambia.  She is also a co-investigator on the NIHR-funded AMPHoRA project exploring health impacts of agricultural air pollution, and the Wellcome-funded SHEFS project researching sustainable and healthy food systems in India, South Africa and the UK.

Dr Tereza Vandrovcova is an academic at the University of New York in Prague (UNYP) where she teaches Social Psychology, Sociology and Animals in Human Society: Psychological Perspectives. She also teaches at the Charles University (Prague) and Masaryk University (Brno). Her research interests include critical animal studies, the psychology of meat consumption and the sociology of science. She is a co-founder of the online vegan-guide called Soucitne.cz and the collective EACAS (European Association for Critical Animal Studies). She is also an activist and spokesperson at the NGO Open your eyes (Otevři oči).

Deborah is a Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Chester. She has long been interested in sustainability and animal welfare and has recently published research on recycling in the Victorian period, focusing on the work of Charles Dickens. She is currently at work restoring a neglected garden using traditional organic methods and ensuring the space offers the widest possible range of habitats for wildlife.

Kamil Vlcek is a neuroscientist at the Institute of Physiology at the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, focusing on the brain basis of spatial navigation in humans. Through scholarships, he worked at New York University, Collège de France and University College London. He teaches cognitive psychology at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University and also supervises students at the Faculty of Science and Medical Faculty. He was a secretary of Czech and Slovak ethological society. In autumn 2019, he initiated an open letter from Czech academics to the government calling on them to be more actively focused on climate change. He is an active member of the SustainableAcademy.cz initiative.

Barry Brook, an ecologist and modeller, is an ARC Australian Laureate Professor and Chair of Environmental Sustainability at the University of Tasmania. He is a highly cited scientist, having published three books, over 350 refereed papers, and many popular articles. His awards include the 2006 Australian Academy of Science Fenner Medal, the 2010 Community Science Educator of the Year and 2013 Scopus Researcher of the Year. His research focuses on the impacts of global change on biodiversity, wildlife ecology, ecological dynamics, paleoenvironments, energy, and simulation models. His career goals have centred on understanding the processes that lead to extinction and investigating conservation actions that can best mitigate this risk.

Gail is an expert on global risk arising from the systemic changes occurring in the natural environment. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Frontier Risk and was a scientific keynote speaker at WEF’s 2020 session at Davos “What’s at Stake: The Arctic” alongside former US Vice President, Al Gore. Since 2012, she has been Professor-in-Residence at the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and is actively involved in building science-based targets collective business action, including those for a future low-carbon economy. She has over 60 peer-reviewed scientific papers, including in prestigious journals Nature, Nature Communication, and the Academy of Management Journal. Her PhD is from Queen’s University and her field work was conducted in the subarctic region of Canada. She is regularly interviewed by the press. You can follow her @GenerationCO2.

Randall S. Abate is the inaugural Rechnitz Family and Urban Coast Institute Endowed Chair in Marine and Environmental Law and Policy, and a Professor in the Department of Political Science and Sociology, at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. He also serves as the Director of the Institute for Global Understanding at Monmouth. Professor Abate writes and teaches at the intersection of animal law and environmental law. His recent books include What can Animal Law learn from Environmental Law? (ELI Press, 2d ed., 2020) and Climate Change and the Voiceless: Protecting Future Generations, Wildlife, and Natural Resources (Cambridge University Press, 2019). His latest article, 'Anthropocene Accountability Litigation: Confronting Common Enemies to Promote a Just Transition', was published in the spring 2021 symposium issue of the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law.

John is Professor of Moral Theology at Regis College, the Jesuit College at the University of Toronto. He completed his PhD at Duke University. Previously he taught at the Dominican School of Theology and Philosophy and at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA and in the School of Theology and Religious Studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC. He has also been a Visiting Professor at the Duke Divinity School and the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life. He is interested in Environmental and Animal Ethics.

Lester R. Brown, described as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” by The Washington Post, is Founder and President of Earth Policy Institute, a non-profit environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C. During a career that started with tomato farming, Brown has received numerous awards, including 25 honorary degrees, and has authored or co-authored over 50 books. His books, the most recent of which is World on the Edge, have appeared in 40 languages.