Speakers

Bénédicte Boisseron is Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her interdisciplinary research brings into conversation Black Studies, Critical Animal Studies, and Environmental Humanities. She is the author of the award-winning Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora. Her latest book, Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question, draws on recent debates about black life and animal rights. She has published extensively on black studies and animal studies. She has been awarded a 2022 Guggenheim fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and is currently at work on a book entitled Black Freegan, on the poetics of repurposing, reclaiming, and reusing in a Black context.

Bénédicte will be presenting Afro-Dog, Blackness and the Animal Question.

John Borrows B.A., M.A., J.D., LL.M. (Toronto), Ph.D. (Osgoode Hall Law School), LL.D. (Hons., Dalhousie, York, SFU, Queen’s & Law Society of Ontario), D.H.L, (Toronto), F.R.S.C., O.C., is the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Victoria Law School in British Columbia, and Loveland Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Toronto Law School. His publications include, Recovering Canada; The Resurgence of Indigenous Law (Donald Smiley Award best book in Canadian Political Science, 2002), Canada's Indigenous Constitution (Canadian Law and Society Best Book Award 2011), Drawing Out Law: A Spirit's Guide (2010), Freedom and Indigenous Constitutionalism ((Donald Smiley Award best book in Canadian Political Science, 2016), The Right Relationship (with Michael Coyle, ed.), Resurgence and Reconciliation (with Michael Asch, Jim Tully, eds.), Law’s Indigenous Ethics (2020 Best subsequent Book Award from Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, 2020 W. Wes Pue Best book award from the Canadian Law and Society Association). He is the 2017 Killam Prize winner in Social Sciences and the 2019 Molson Prize Winner from the Canada Council for the Arts, the 2020 Governor General’s Innovation Award, and the 2021 Canadian Bar Association President’s Award winner.  He was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2020. John is a member of the Chippewa of the Nawash First Nation in Ontario, Canada.

John will be presenting Animals in Law in Relation to Indigenous Law.

Angela Fernandez is an Full Professor at the Faculty of Law University of Toronto, where she is cross-appointed to the Department of History and teaches a course in animal law, as well as overseeing the production of the Brooks Animal Law Digest: Canada Edition and (in conjunction with the Bora Laskin Law Library) the Animal Law Research Guide.

She completed her LL.M. (2002) and J.S.D. (2007) at the Yale Law School. Her LL.B. and B.C.L. are from the Faculty of Law at McGill University, where she graduated from the National Program in 2000. She clerked at the Supreme Court of Canada in 2000-2001 for Justice Michel Bastarache. Professor Fernandez has had tenure since 2009. In 2017, Professor Fernandez became an Associate Editor of Book Reviews (Americas) for Law and History Review. She currently sits on the American Society of Legal History Board of Directors and Executive Committee.

She is also a member of the Board of Advisors for Animal Justice Canada and is a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. She was convener of a Working Group “Animals in the Law and Humanities” at the Jackman Humanities Institute of the University of Toronto from 2013-2017 and is currently part of the "Animal Law Lab" at the Faculty of Law.

Professor Fernandez is a member of the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights, Law & Policy collaborative research network BASAN (Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network) and is the inaugural scholar in the “Brooks-U” Video-Documentary Series on “Animal Law Fundamentals.”

Macarena Montes Franceschini is an attorney and doctoral researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra’s Law Department. She has been a visiting researcher at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg and a Rights Research Fellow at the Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School, where she will begin a visiting fellowship in 2023. She is also a board member of the UPF-Centre for Animal Ethics, editor of the journal Law, Ethics and Philosophy (LEAP), a member of the Editorial Committee of the Chilean Journal of Animal Law, and the treasurer of the Great Ape Project - Spain. She has written several articles on nonhuman animal personhood, animal rights, and animal law and a book titled Animal Law in Chile.

Macarena will be co-presenting Animal Rights and the Rights of Nature.

Martha Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago Law School. She received her BA from NYU and her MA and PhD from Harvard, and has received honorary degrees from sixty-three colleges and universities across the globe. Among her awards are the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy (2016), the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy and Culture (2018), and the Holberg Prize (2021). Martha has edited twenty-one books and published over 450 articles, and is currently working on a book on justice for non-human animals. She is also the co-founding president of the Human Development & Capability Association.

Martha will be the keynote speaker on Justice for Animals: Practical Progress through Philosophical Theory.

Kristen Stilt is Professor of Law and Faculty Director of the Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School. Prior to HLS, Stilt was Harry R. Horrow Professor in International Law at Northwestern Law School and Professor of History at Northwestern University.

Stilt’s interest in animal issues escalated while conducting research in Egypt for her PhD in Middle Eastern Studies. While there she became involved with several animal advocacy groups, and still helps fund an Egyptian animal rescue project—in addition to personally rescuing dozens of dogs and cats off the streets of Cairo.

She was named a Carnegie Scholar for her work on constitutional Islam, and in 2013 was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. She has also received awards from Fulbright and Fulbright-Hays.

Publications include Islamic Law in Action (Oxford University Press, 2011); “Constitutional Innovation and Animal Protection in Egypt,” Law & Social Inquiry (2018); and “Law” in Critical Terms for Animal Studies, edited by Lori Gruen (University of Chicago Press, 2018).  She is currently working on a new book project entitled Halal Animals, to be published by Oxford University Press.

Her research focuses on animal law, and in particular the intersection of animal law and religious law; Islamic law and society; and comparative constitutional law.