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30Apr

Workshop: Common Ground on Animal Ethics - When Philosophy Meets Anthropology

Hosted by the Department of Anthropology and co-sponsored by the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience
LSE Campus
Thursday 30 April 2026 9am to Friday 1 May 2026 - 5pm

This in-person event brings together leading philosophers and anthropologists to explore shared questions at the intersection of ethics and human–animal relations. Since the 1970s, animal ethics has become both a central academic topic and a pressing global issue. While philosophy has offered influential theoretical frameworks—most recently revisited in Animal Liberation Now (Singer & Harari 2023)—anthropology’s “multispecies turn” (Kirksey & Helmreich 2010) and “ethical turn” (Laidlaw 2002) have opened rich empirical and interpretative approaches. Yet sustained dialogue between these traditions remains rare. This workshop seeks to change that.

Supported by Professor Catherine Allerton and co-sponsored by the LSE Anthropology Department and the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at LSE, the event will feature keynote dialogues and paper presentations. Our aim is to build an ongoing network of scholars and explore future collaborations—including a potential special issue or collective volume in an interdisciplinary animal studies journal.

Keynote dialogues:

  • Jonathan Birch (LSE) & Webb Keane (Michigan) – Negotiating Universality and Diversity in Animal Ethics
  • Angie Pepper (Roehampton) & Samantha Hurn (Exeter) – Methods and Ethics of Knowing Animals
  • Clare A. Palmer (Texas A&M) & Garry Marvin (Roehampton) – Assistance and Killing: Ethics with Wild Animals
  • Sechin Y. S. Chien (Academia Sinica) & Naisargi N. Davé (Toronto) – The Ethics of Companion Animal Rescue
  • Mark J. Rowlands (Miami) & Adam Reed (St Andrews) – Animals’ Ethical Agency and Patiency

Paper presentations: (panel division to be announced)

  • Cristina Douglas (Edinburgh)- Follow the Dog: More-than-Human Ethics in Dementia Care through Animal-Assisted Therapy
  • Erin McConkey (Hawai’i)- Ouroboric Ethics: Interspecies Injury and Exploitation within Lifesaving Antivenom
  • Gabriella Santini (UCL): On Doing Research with Animals: Curiosity, Agency, and the Ethics of Asking the Right Questions
  • Hazel McArthur (Edinburgh)- When Care Hurts: The Ethical Tensions of Affective Human–Animal Relations
  • Imogen Suett (Uni of Law): Does the Ecofeminist Strengthen or Weaken their Role as an Advocate for the Liberation of Oppression by Intersecting with the Animal Rights Movement?
  • Katariina Hynninen (LSE)- Aesthetic Experience and Animal Dignity
  • Kathy Harrison (LSE)- Animals as Agents in the Animal rights Movement in Contemporary China
  • Kunbzang Tsering (Bonn)- Sinful or not? 'Slaughter Renunciation' Movement and Its Reaction in Tibet
  • Mathilde Tahar-Malaussena (UCL)- Enlarging the Concept of Animal Agency: Inventing with Non-humans
  • Xiaohong Wu (Exeter)- Between Divine Instruments and Instrumentalized Divinities: Rethinking Animal Roles in Daoist Practice through a Multispecies Ethnography Perspective
  • Yufei Zhou (LSE)- Ethical Objectification: How Pastoralists and Enthusiasts Relate to Tibetan Mastiffs in Contemporary China

LSE holds a wide range of events, covering many of the most controversial issues of the day, and speakers at our events may express views that cause offence. The views expressed by speakers at LSE events do not reflect the position or views of the London School of Economics and Political Science.