Events
Upcoming
LSE Festival 2026: How to save the planet
LSE's public research festival - free and open to all
Staff of the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience are contributing to events highlighted below.
Launch reception | Monday 15 June 12-2pm
This exhibition will feature a poster from Veterinary Policy Research Fellow, Dr Steven McCulloch, within the theme 'Holding those with power to account'.
Food futures | Saturday 20 June 5-6pm
In-person and online public panel discussion, chaired by our Centre Director, Professor Jonathan Birch. Our Human Behaviours and Attitudes Research Officer, Dr Feiyang Wang, will contribute to a panel discussion on our current food system, a leading cause of biodiversity loss, global warming and public health risks. Weaving together diverse but complementary perspectives and areas of focus around the common themes of sustainability, health, and wellbeing, this panel discussion will address the ethical, logistical, and technical challenges of transitioning to a more planet-friendly food system.
Cross-Cultural Dialogue on Animal Sentience
Friday 26 June 7pm-8.30pm
In-person, Hong Kong Theatre
Organised by PrashantAdvait Foundation, we will host a cross-cultural discussion on food ethics, sentience, and the environment - a neglected topic connecting food choices to animal sentience and wider ethical questions. The environmental connection is especially important since the event will be held during London Climate Action Week.
Professor Jonathan Birch will speak with a philosopher and author from the Global South: https://acharyaprashant.org/. They are an IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad alumnus who cleared the All-India Civil Services Exam in their early twenties and left a high-performing career to teach full-time since 2014. They chose to trade the prestige of managing the state and a dazzling corporate career for the purpose of helping people reach their highest potential. Today, they have over 100 million social media followers across 80+ countries, 8 billion+ lifetime video views, and have published 160+ books. They received the Most Impactful Environmentalist Award from the Green Society of India in 2025 and was ranked #20 in the Watkins List of Most Spiritually Influential Living People globally in 2026.
Past
2025-26
Common Ground on Animal Ethics - When Anthropology Meets Philosophy
This workshop built on the growing strengths in animal ethics research at LSE -particularly within the Philosophy Department’s Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience and the Anthropology Department’s ongoing work on ethics and human-animal relations. Supported by Professor Catherine Allerton, it brought together established philosophers and anthropologists into conversation with early career scholars, creating a platform for shared inquiry, debate, and future collaboration.
This event was hosted by the Department of Anthropology, co-sponsored by The Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience.
Dr Feiyang Wang and Kristina Kiminiute contributed a research poster presentation during the CARMA Conference 2026 - an event aimed at a multidisciplinary audience interested in active debate on cellular agriculture. Their poster covered some early findings of a mixed-method research project, involving interviews and quantitative surveys.
Dr Steven McCulloch featured as a keynote speaker during the Caring Vets Conference 2026. His talk explored veterinary professional codes of conduct, focusing on commitments to animal welfare and the public interest. He highlighted that institutional policy positions often align closely with existing production systems, and emphasised the importance of ensuring that values, policy, and practice are aligned.
Animal economics
In this public lecture, Professor Nicolas Treich presented the main arguments of his Animal Economics book; this explores the complexity of human attitudes toward animals and combines this with economic theory to show how we can understand animal welfare as an externality and thereby incorporate animals into decisions. After the book presentation, a panel furthered explored the themes of the book.
We co-hosted this event alongside the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the Global School of Sustainability.
The 4th International Online Conference on Animals (IOCAN) 2026 included a keynote session from our Veterinary Policy Research Fellow, Dr Steven McCulloch, on the topic "Captured or Independent? Veterinary Institutions, Animal Welfare Science, and the Politics of Farmed Animal Welfare and Meat Reduction".
The Coller Animal Law Firm hosted a second in-person, invite only event about shaping the future of the UK animal welfare legislation following the launch of the new UK Animal Welfare Strategy. The event included a panel discussion: "Different perspectives on how to influence UK policy for better outcomes for farm animals”, with Professor Jonathan Birch alongside other stakeholders in driving sustainable and animal-friendly food systems.
The Oxford Real Farming Conference (ORFC) 2026 included a panel discussion featuring our Animals and AI Research Officer, Dr Natasha Boyland, on the topic "Sentient Beings: What science and AI reveal about farmed animals". The panel explore how rapidly developing AI technologies could influence our understanding of animal sentience and shape future policy and practice - bringing opportunity and risks.
Saving Britain's Wildlife
This public lecture covered stories from the frontline of the fight to restore wild Britain. An expert panel brought to life the ethics of conservation in the real world: when should we intervene and when should we leave "wild nature" alone? When conflicts between economic and environmental interests emerge, how should they be handled? How can scientists involve local communities in conservation to avoid tensions and build coalitions? Does a focus on large animals lead to undervaluing tiny animals, like insects, or can we help both at once? And since wild nature involves a lot of suffering, do we have to choose between prioritizing animal welfare and prioritizing biodiversity?
This event was Chaired by our Centre Director, Professor Jonathan Birch, hosted by the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science (CPNSS), Global School of Sustainability and Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method.
The London Vet Show 2025 hosted a panel discussion including our Centre Director, Professor Jonathan Birch, on the topic "AI on farms - is it good for vets and animal welfare?". The panel discuss emerging technologies, their use in farming and what the future could look like - covering opportunities and risks.
Launch event and panel: How AI is helping - and harming - animals
This event marked the launch of the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience. The programme opened with remarks from Professor Roman Frigg, Head of Department (LSE Philosophy), followed by an introduction from Larry Kramer, President and Vice Chancellor of LSE. Jeremy Coller, whose generous donation made the Centre possible, then offered opening reflections before Centre Director Professor Jonathan Birch introduced the Centre’s mission.
We then moved into an expert panel discussion focussing on our Animals and AI research priority area. An area of notable public concern; AI is transforming the lives of animals at speed, but these huge impacts are going unnoticed and unregulated. Some of the changes could transform our relationships with our fellow creatures for the better, whereas others could make existing animal welfare problems much worse and even more deeply entrenched. How can we curb the risks and take the opportunities?