Working Group on Animals in the Law and Humanities
This Working Group provides a monthly space for the discussion of in-progress and recent scholarship by academics pertaining to animal law, its histories, and problems of jurisprudence and legal interpretation, as well as work in other cognate disciplines such as philosophy, history, literature and sociology that engage with the treatment and understanding of nonhuman animals.
Subscribe to our emails list here for updates on upcoming events. To propose a topic for future presentations, email us at: animal.law@utoronto.ca
Past Presentations
2025-2026
- Sarah Berger Richardson (November 18, 2025) presenting "Behind Closed Doors: Humane Handling Violations and the Shadow of Regulatory Transparency in Canadian Slaughterhouses"
- Jeff Sebo (October 21, 2025) Book Discussion - The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why
- Iselin Gambert, Matthew Liebman & Elan Abrell (23 September 2025) presenting "Prefigurative Animal Law"
- John Olusegun Adenitire & Raffael Fasel (16 September 2025) Book Discussion - Animals and the Constitution: Towards Sentience-Based Constitutionalism
2024-2025
- Kat Poje (17 September 2024) presenting “Save from Suffering: Eugenics and Animal Euthanasia in Early Twentieth-Century Humane Movement”
- Josh Milburn (22 October 2024) presenting “Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully” on his book Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully (Oxford University Press, 2023)
- Diego Ellis Soto (19 November 2024) presenting “The Social, Environmental Justice and Legal Consequences of Uneven Biodiversity Knowledge Across Urban Areas in the United States” published as Diego Ellis-Soto, Melissa Chapman & Amanda M. Koltz, “Addressing Data Disparities is Critical for Biodiversity Assessments” 39:12 Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2024)
- Tyler Totten (14 January 2025) presenting “To Stand for All: Confronting Logics of Human Exceptionalism in Legal Personification”
- Serrin Rutledge-Prior (18 February 2025) presenting “Multispecies Legality: Animals and the Foundation of Legal Inclusion” on her forthcoming book Multispecies Legality: Animals and the Foundation of Legal Inclusion (Cambridge University Press)
- Adam Clasky (18 March 2025) presenting “Animals as RIghts-holders: Could the Charter Abolish Farmed Animal Use” published as “Animals as Rights-Holders: Could the Charter Abolish Farmed Animal Use?” 13:1 Global Journal of Animal Law (2025)
2023-2024
- Justin Marceau & Steffen Seitz (3 October 2023) presenting “Voluntary Prosecution and the Case of Animal Rescue published as Justin Marcea, Wayne Hsiung & Steffan Seitz, “Voluntary Prosecution and the Case of Animal Rescue” 137:4 Harvard Law Review Forum (2024): 213
- Robyn Hederman (14 November 2023) presenting “Woman, Madness, Physicians, and the Anti-Vivisection Controversy in America”
- Elizabeth Schoales (12 December 2023) presenting “Panic, What Panic? What to do When the Media Doesn’t Bite”
- Ryann Fineberg (16 January 2024) presenting “Social Media as a Tool to Mobilize Youth in Advocating for Animals”
- Charlton Yingling & Andrew Kettler (13 February 2024) presenting “Cattle, Chattel & Capital: Agency, Avarice, & the Alimentary Atlantic” (2025) English Historical Review.
- Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond (12 March 2024) presenting “The Sanctuary of a Sentence” forthcoming in Elizabeth Tavella & Eva Spiegelhofer eds., Animated Wor(l)ds: Language and Relationality for Multispecies Kinship (Radish Press)
2022-2023
- Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond (17 October 2022) presenting “Requiem for Tia Maria” published in Chloë Taylor ed., The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals, (Routledge, 2025)
- Irus Braverman (15 November 2022) presenting “Introduction: Settling Nature” on her book Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel (University of Minnesota Press, 2023)]
- Kelly Struthers Montford & Darren Chang (13 December 2023) presenting “Non-Carceral Responses to Interpersonal and Structural Harms Against Animals: Evaluating the Potential for Restorative and Transformative Justice” published as Kelly Struthers Montford, Darren Chang & Selingul Yalcin, “Anti-Carceral Approaches to Addressing Harms Against Animals: Considerations on Multispecies Restorative and Transformative Justice” 50:1 Law & Social Inquiry (2024): 284-311
- Eva Bernet-Kempers (16 January 2023) presenting “From ‘Thing’ to ‘Family Member’: the Changing Status of Companion Animals in Continental Law” forthcoming in Ann Peters, Kristen Stilt & Saskia Stucki eds., The Oxford Handbook of Global Animal Law (Oxford University Press)
- Jessica Eisen (13 February 2023) presenting “Feminist Animal Law: Analogy, Intersection, Method”
- Matthew Liebman (14 March 2023) presenting “Animal Plaintiffs” published as “Animal Plaintiffs” 108 Minnesota Law Review (2024): 1707-1788