Animals, Equality, and Democracy: Themes in Memory of Siobhan O’Sullivan

Angie Pepper (University of Roehampton); Josh Milburn (Loughborough University); Sara Van Goozen (University of York); Matthew Wray Perry (University of British Columbia). 

Animal ethicists increasingly recognize political philosophy as offering valuable tools for thinking about interspecies relations, while political philosophers increasingly recognize questions about animals as worthy of exploration. This is, in a large part, thanks to the pioneering work of scholars championing the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics in the 2000s and 2010s – including, not least, their work convening sessions on animals and politics at the MANCEPT Workshops, which have been a regular feature of the conference since 2010.* 

Indeed, according to Siobhan O’Sullivan, a co-editor of the 2016 collection The Political Turn in Animal Ethics, the term ‘political turn in animal ethics’ has its origins at the MANCEPT Workshops,** which she attended in 2013 and 2014. Sadly, Siobhan died of ovarian cancer in 2023, aged 49. This represented a significant loss to the ‘animal politics’ community, as well as the broader world of animal studies.  

Borrowing our title from Siobhan’s pioneering 2011 book, we propose a panel on ‘Animals, Equality, and Democracy’ open to all scholars in animal politics, from those who knew Siobhan well to those only now entering a field indelibly shaped by her contribution. These themes act as an avenue to reflect on what has been achieved and to consider the future of the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics. Welcoming scholars of political philosophy, political theory, ethics, political science, (critical) animal studies, and cognate disciplines, we invite abstracts on the following topics, all of recurring interest to Siobhan: 

• Animals in liberal and democratic political thought and practice 
• Animals, equality, and (anti-)speciesism 
• The ethics of interspecies social relations  
• The visibility of animals, and the politics of being an animal 
• Ethical, legal, and political issues associated with animal activism 
• The place of political theory and political science in animal ethics and animal studies, and the nature of the ‘political turn’ in animal ethics 
• The role of academic work about animals in making the world more friendly to animals, and the popularization of animal studies research 
• The challenges of undertaking animal studies research, and the challenges of being an animal studies scholar

Confirmed speakers: Alasdair Cochrane (University of Sheffield), Robert Garner (Leicester University), Eze Paez (Pompeu Fabra University), and Anat Pick (Queen Mary University of London). 

*For more information, see https://josh-milburn.com/animal-politics/ 

** See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpEAfjLnBd8&t