When: Tuesday, April 26, 2022, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PMWhere: Online, Zoom
The Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at Queen Mary (IHSS) is pleased to invite you to the launch of Dr Jeff Sebo’s monograph Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves (Oxford University Press, 2022)
In the book Jeff Sebo argues that humans have a moral responsibility to include animals in global health and environmental policy. In particular, we should reduce our use of animals as part of our pandemic and climate change mitigation efforts and increase our support for animals as part of our adaptation efforts. Applying and extending frameworks such as One Health and the Green New Deal, Sebo calls for reducing support for factory farming, deforestation, and the wildlife trade; increasing support for humane, healthful, and sustainable alternatives; and considering human and nonhuman needs holistically. Sebo also considers connections with practical issues such as education, employment, social services, and infrastructure, as well as with theoretical issues such as well-being, moral status, political status, and population ethics. In all cases, he shows that these issues are both important and complex, and that we should neither underestimate our responsibilities because of our limitations, nor underestimate our limitations because of our responsibilities.
Dr 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 is author of Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves (Oxford University Press, 2022) and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights (Routledge, 2018) and Food, Animals, and the Environment (Routledge, 2018). He is also an executive committee member at the NYU Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, an advisory board member at the Animals in Context series at NYU Press, a board member at Minding Animals International, a mentor at Sentient Media, and a senior research affiliate at the Legal Priorities Project.
Dr Raffael N Fasel is an Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge and a Teaching Bye-Fellow and Director of Studies in Law at Jesus College, Cambridge. He holds a £440,000 research grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation, for which he is also affiliated with the University of Zurich. Raffael was previously a research fellow at LSE Law School. He obtained his PhD in Law from the University of Cambridge (Sidney Sussex College), with a thesis on the legal theory and intellectual history of human and animal rights, for which he was awarded the University’s Yorke Prize. He holds a Bachelor of Law and a Master of Law degree from the University of Fribourg, an MA in Philosophy from University College London, and an LLM from Yale Law School.
Dr Beth Greenhough is Associate Professor of Human Geography and Fellow of Keble College, University of Oxford. Her research is concerned with the ways in which humans, animals and microbes become resources for biomedical research. She is Co-PI on the Wellcome Trust Animal Research Nexus project and co-author of Bioinformation (Polity, 2017), Health Geographies: A critical introduction (Wiley-Blackwell 2017) and Bodies Across Borders (Routledge, 2015).
Dr John Adenitire is a Strategic Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary University of London. His research has focused on the legal right to exemption for religious and non-religious conscientious objectors from a wide variety of legal obligations, including anti-discrimination norms. He currently works on the genealogy of religion and religious freedom and on non-human animals in constitutional law and theory.
Prof Simon Reid-Henry is Professor of Historical and Political Geography and Director of IHSS. His current work examines the fault lines of democracy at home and abroad and the political dynamics of international public finance. Simon is also a Programme Director at Counterpoint, and Research Professor at PRIO in Oslo leading an international team examining the politics of duties in modern political society. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Empire of Democracy: The Remaking of the West since the Cold War, 1971-2017, The Political Origins of Inequality: Why a More Equal World Is Better for Us All and The Cuban Cure: Reason and Resistance in Global Science.