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 a Full Professor at the Faculty of Law at the 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 is the author of Pierson v. Post, The Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 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.” She is also on the Board of Advisors and is a Director of Animal Justice Canada.

Angela will be presenting Animals as Property, Quasi-Property or Quasi-Person.

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 the Law School. She is also the Director of Harvard Law School’s Program on Law and Society in the Muslim World.

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 (three of whom now reside here in Cambridge). Egyptian animal issues also became a focus of Professor Stilt’s scholarship and she currently is working on a comparative analysis of the inclusion of an animal welfare provision in the 2014 Egyptian Constitution. Professor Stilt recently discussed the convergence of these issues in a Harvard Law Today feature entitled, The Intersection of Animals, Law, and Religion.

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.

Stilt received a JD from the University of Texas School of Law, where she was an associate editor of the Texas Law Review and co-editor-in-chief of the Texas Journal of Women in the Law. Stilt holds a PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University.

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