Academic members
Dr CHRIS DEGELING
Chris Degeling is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine Sydney School of Public Health, and a practicing veterinarian. Current research interest include: Justice in Public Policy Processes; Nonhuman Animals, Population Health and Public Health Ethics; Ethics and Animal Experimentation; and the History and Philosophy of Medicine.
Staff profile
Dr ANNE FAWCETT
Faculty of Vet Science
Anne Fawcett completed a Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in philosophy, before completing a Bachelor of Veterinary Science. She is Associate Lecturer in Professional Practice within the Faculty of Veterinary Science. She contributes monthly to The Veterinarian Magazine. She is a practicing small animal veterinarian in Sydney’s inner west where she interacts with animals daily. Research and teaching interests include the interaction of humans and animals in a veterinary clinical context, clinical veterinary practice and veterinary ethics.
Dr MICHELLE HYDE
Senior Lecturer, Veterinary Science
Dr Michelle Hyde's interest in animals and science goes back a long way, to a childhood filled with dogs, birds and horses. Her initial University studies resulted in a degree in Agricultural Science, specializing in Animal Nutrition and her PhD studies, also at Sydney, focused on ruminant nutrition and biochemistry. Michelle has also completed a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education. A longstanding interest in extension and communication, and the desire to allow the wide dissemination of scientific finding to a lay audience led Michelle to complete a Diploma in Book Editing and set up her own business, HD Writing and educational Services. Michelle is passionate about assisting people to begin, carry on, and find success in academic and scientific writing and communicating and regularly holds workshops and seminars, as well as consulting and editing.
Dr ROB IRVINE
Centre for Values, Ethics and the Law in Medicine
Rob Irvine is an Associate of the Centre for Values, Ethics and Law in Medicine, University of Sydney, Australia. He is responsible for teaching one of two foundation units in the University’s Bioethics Program, Critical Concepts in Bioethics. He is has responsibility for teaching animal research ethics. His current research involves the analysis of the disappearance of the nonhuman animal in bioethical thought as well animal ethics and the politics of theory. With Chris Degeling (VELiM) and Ian Kerridge (VELiM) he is investigating religious perspectives on human-animal chimeras. Since 2002 he has developed teaching programmes on animal ethics and animals in society for students in bioethics and sociology. He has many years experience of multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary practice in a variety of contexts.
Staff profile
Dr JAY JOHNSTON
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Jay Johnston is a cross-disciplinary researcher (religious studies. Philosophy, cultural studies, art history) whose projects examine concepts of subjectivity and self and their attendant models of aesthetic and ethical interaction. She is particularly interested in cross-cultural and cross-species forms of intersubjectivity.
Current Animal–Human Project
Transpecies Identity and animal-human subcultures (especially Otherkin). Examines concepts of the self considered as a mixture of ‘animal’ and human. Considered in relation to critical animal studies and the Continental philosophical tradition. Includes collaboration with Dr Fiona Probyn-Rapsey.
Staff profile
Dr JULIA KINDT
Arts and Social Sciences
I am currently Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney. The interests of HARN intersect with my current book project, tentatively entitled Anthropology and Animality in Ancient Greece - a response to the discussion of the question of the animal (and the appropriation of ancient world arguments in the course of it) in continental philosophy (Heidegger, Derrida, Agamben). The book explores the construction of animality in a variety of ancient world texts and contexts, including those of art, language, philosophy, history, and science.
Assoc Prof. TESS LEA
Gender and Cultural Studies
Faculty of Arts and Social Science
Tess is an anthropologist who has specialized in studying the social life of liberal settler policies and their material imprint in people¹s lives. This has called her to think about the human/not human distinction and what the foundational construct permits. To date her work on policy concentrates on
Indigenous: non-Indigenous entanglements, but increasingly this requires understanding contests over space and resources, and in this way to a consideration of the haunting aspects of species-centrism in western settlement.
Staff profile
Professor MIKE MICHAEL
Mike Michael is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. His interests include the relation of everyday life to technoscience, and biotechnological and biomedical innovation and culture. Current research projects include examination of the ethical aspects of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, and the interdisciplinary exploration of energy demand reduction through sociological and speculative design techniques. He has work on human-nonhuman animal relations includes sociological analyses of the animal experimentation controversy (with Lynda Birke) and the re-making of human-nonhuman animal boundaries in the context of xenotranplantation (with Nik Brown). He has considered the role of animals in everyday life – as actors in social methodology, as roadkill, and as companion-species-at-a-distance.
Staff profile
Dr AGATA MRVA-MONTOYA
Sydney University Press
Dr Agata Mrva-Montoya completed a PhD in archaeology and a GradCert in publishing, and is currently an editor at Sydney University Press. Her thesis explored the role, meaning and symbolism of animals in ancient Cyprus. Research interests include: the human and animal relationship in the ancient Mediterranean; the social and symbolic value of ‘cultural fauna’; the role of animals in religious and community rituals; the relationship between symbolism, attitude and treatment of animals, and the ethnic makeup of people in ancient and modern Cyprus.
Prof DAVID RAUBENHEIMER
Charles Perkins Centre and Faculty of Veterinary Science and School of Biological Sciences
David Raubenheimer is an expert in nutritional ecology, the discipline that studies how nutrition-related aspects of an animal’s environment interact with its biology to determine health, welfare and fitness outcomes. Nutritional ecology is a highly integrative field, spanning molecular, cellular, physiological, whole organism, population, community and ecosystem levels of organisation, and is relevant to all animals. Indeed, David has argued in his recent book with Steve Simpson (The Nature of Nutrition: from Animal Adaptation to Human Obesity, Princeton University Press) that nutrition is so fundamental to every aspect of life that nutritional ecology should be regarded as a foundational science within biology, equivalent to evolutionary biology.
Professor DAVID SCHLOSBERG
Government and International Relations
School of Social and Political Sciences
David Schlosberg is Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. He is author of Defining Environmental Justice (2007) and Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism (1999), co-author of Green States and Social Movements (2003), and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society (2011), all with Oxford University Press. Known internationally for his work in environmental politics and political theory, he has held visiting appointments at the London School of Economics, Australian National University, and Princeton University. Current work includes climate justice, the place of the non-human world in justice theory and practice, and the foci of a new generation of environmental justice movements.
Staff profile
Prof RICHARD SHINE AM FAA
Biological Sciences
My work covers a range of fields, but focusing on the biology of reptile and amphibian populations. I work at the interface of evolution, ecology and conservation biology. My studies span a wide range of methodologies, ranging from long-term ecological monitoring through behavioural-ecology experiments both in the field and the laboratory. I have been employed at the University of Sydney throughout most of my career, initially in a standard academic role (promoted to Professor 1993), but have taken up a succession of research-only positions since 2002. All have been (and are) funded by the Australian Research Council. I was an Australian Professorial Fellow from 2002-05, a Federation Fellow from 2006-10, and am about to take up a Laureate Fellowship (2013-18). I have published more than 800 peer-reviewed papers, and have an h-index of 80. I am a Fellow (and currently, member of Council) of the Australian Academy of Science.
Dr DINESH WADIWEL
Sociology and Social Policy
School of Social and Political Sciences
Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel is lecturer is socio-legal studies and human rights in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy. His research interests include sovereignty, rights, violence and critical animal studies. Dinesh has taught in politics, sociology and sociology at the University of Notre Dame Australia and the University of Western Sydney, and has worked extensively in non government social justice organisations organisations. He is currently completing a manuscript for Rodopi Press called Animal Sovereignties and co-editing (with Matthew Chrulew) a collection called Foucault and Animals.