About

My research focuses on animal politics (particularly its intersection with animal law), the politics of advocacy and representation, the history of political thought, and the role of political institutions in promoting liberal democratic values.

My first book project, entitled “Multispecies Legality: Interests, Personhood, and the Basis of Legal Inclusion” looks at the place of animals in the legal system and provides an interests-based model of legal inclusion that, I argue, will improve the legal protections available to all animals, whether non-human or human. The book is currently under contract with Cambridge University Press.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in animal ethics in the Philosophy Department at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Here, my two primary research projects will focus on the concept of legal autonomy, as applied to other-than-human animals, and the place of animals within the history of Western political thought. I will also be teaching PHIL 296 Animals and Society.

Previously, I worked as a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. There, I was engaged in a number of collaborative projects, which included research on story-telling in the context of election campaigns, Australians’ views on care work, and Australians’ views on the role of local governments. I was also on the teaching team for POGO8403 Cases in Contemporary Public Policy, a core course in Crawford’s Master of Public Policy, and was the sole convenor for POGO8021 Public Sector Ethics.

During Lent Term, 2024, I was a Visiting Researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law, where I worked two projects: one that critiqued the “rights of nature” movement as a basis for animals’ legal rights, and another that analysed the outcomes of prosecutions under animal welfare laws in Australia.

In December 2022, I graduated with a PhD from the School of Politics and International Relations at the Australian National University. On my thesis panel, I was privileged to have Professor Keith Dowding (ANU), Dr. Alexandra Oprea (SUNY - Buffalo), and Professor Christian Barry (ANU). Prior to beginning my PhD, I completed a BSc (Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology; Biological Anthropology) at the ANU, and before that, a BA (Politics; Philosophy) at the University of Adelaide.

In addition to my work in academia, from 2022-24 I served as a Member of the Australian Capital Territory Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (AWAC), which is the body legislatively tasked with updating the Territory’s animal welfare codes of practice and providing advice to the relevant Minister on emerging issues in animal welfare.

I have also volunteered for several years with the Animal Defenders Office, a Canberra-based, nationally accredited community legal centre that focuses on issues in animal law (including those impacting on animal advocates), and which engages regularly in community outreach activities.

Outside of research and teaching, I enjoy reading, looking for ever more reading material in bookstores, riding my bike, crafts involving needles and hooks, taking pictures of birds (a number of which you can see on this website), and trying - often in vain - to figure out which bird it was that I just took a photo of.