Emerging Scholars Fellows

"I am curious about how private law related to animals has developed over time as expectations related to human/animal interactions have transformed. Through my scholarship, I hope to trace discussions of animals in the common law, particularly property and torts, to investigate societal and judicial perceptions of human relationships with—and responsibilities toward—animals."

"As we debate endlessly in the USA whether a chimpanzee can have its day in court, or if non-human animals can ever have standing to sue for their rights… In Latin America judges are granting zoo animals personhood, and legislatures are enacting Constitutional rights for animals and nature. What drives these differences? I seek to understand the developing disparities between the rights of nature expanding in Latin America and the continuing resistance animal advocates face in United States courts. Indigenous and non-western values often inspire these new laws, so what values undergird the resistance to these rights in the USA?"

"There are two distinct areas I am interested in pursuing. The first is standing, a notoriously difficult issue for animal advocates. One project in that area envisions state courts—chiefly those with liberal standing doctrines—as a good option for alleging, in particular, organizational standing. The second area is First Amendment law. I am interested, in particular, in the free speech implications of state “ag-gag” laws and laws that hyper-criminalize interference with “animal enterprises,” like the federal Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act."

"I am interested in the law and history of global environmental monitoring, specifically the use of biological data to study climate change. My research spans questions of ecology’s interactions with climate science in the mid-twentieth century, southern hemispheric monitoring of atmospheric CO2 in the 1970s, and legal innovations to protect desert animals in the siting of renewable energy facilities. I seek to understand the ways in which courts and regulatory institutions assimilate biological and non-biological data on planetary change, and the role that animals—both as individuals and as species—have played in these complex processes."

"I am interested in conceptions of wildness and domestication in the more-than-human world. These terms have been and continue to be employed in service of colonization and other forms of oppression. I seek to unsettle this history by highlighting and challenging a series of binaries: human-animal, domestic-wild, welfare-conservation, and self-other. I believe in a radical re-envisioning of boundaries and borders, through which we may come to a more expansive and pluralistic understanding of what it means to ethically inhabit a shared world."

"I am particularly interested in the intersection of animal rights law and policy with other areas of social justice. I am planning a research agenda that interprets and develops the interdisciplinary literature applying critical theory, anti-carceral feminism, and anti-racist movement lawyering to animal law. Perhaps more importantly, I hope to build on my work in this area with research that seeks practical strategic recommendations for the real-world implementation of an anti-carceral ethic in animal law."