Catherine Oliver is a Doctoral Researcher in Human Geography, at The School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham. Her Ph.D. Research is called “Changing Spaces of Animal Rights Activism in the U.K.” Her study looks to better understand how and why the animal rights movement has changed in the U.K. since 1950.… Read More
In 2012, I wrote here that Sue Coe is “quite simply, my favourite living artist.” For me, her work sits “proudly along a continuum which includes George Grosz, Otto Dix, Kathe Kollwitz, on the one hand, and El Greco, Thomas Bewick and Goya, on the other.”… Read More
Knowing Animals is among my favourites of podcasts that I follow. It’s hosted by Siobhan O’Sullivan, the Australian political scientist and political theorist who is currently a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. With nearly 80 30-minute episodes produced, Knowing Animals addresses animals and ethics; animals and the law; animals and politics; and animal advocacy. It features interviews with academic and animal advocates. … Read More
Between 1976 and 1978 I was campaigns organiser for Compassion In World Farming. My duties included representing Compassion at various events, organising local groups, public speaking, and producing newsletters and other public educational materials. As Compassion’s second full-time employee, I was very fortunate to work directly with its co-founder, Peter Roberts, who I learned a great deal from. Please read my book, Growl (Lantern Books), for more on my animal advocacy.… Read More
I recall from the 1990s Ken Shapiro, who co-founded with me the Animals and Society Institute in 2005, describing Human-Animal Studies (or Animal Studies as it is also known) as the study of our relationship with animals and their relationship with us. Critical Animal Studies later emerged to situate the human-animal relationship in a broader, progressive, political context of liberation and abolition. I see the academic endeavour of animal studies as complementary to the advocacy of the animal rights movement. Advocacy needs academia (and vice versa) to form a more effective social movement for nonhuman animals.… Read More
I’m not embarrassed to admit that much that was said at the Animal Consciousness conference was beyond me. I’m just an angry and frustrated animal rights vegan who is trying to do something to stop the world from going to hell in a hand basket. I’m not a philosopher, psychologist, anthropologist, neuroscientist, zoologist or biologist. But they all spoke at the conference and had something important to say–even if I didn’t always understand it.… Read More
My chapter, “Are We Smart Enough to Know When to Take the Political Turn for Animals?”, is published in the new anthology, Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, edited by Andrew Woodhall and Gabriel Garmendia da Trindade, published by Spinger/Palgrave Macmillan. … Read More
Growl is the autobiography of Kim Stallwood, one of the guiding lights of the Animal Rights Movement. It is an inside look at the awkward beginnings of a man searching to live authentically and his growth into one of the most powerful proponents of modern animal rights. … Read More
At this year’s annual animal rights conference organised by FARM in Alexandria, VA, I decided against speaking and instead donated my time to my publisher, Lantern Books, and its co-founder, Martin Rowe. … Read More
Not wanting to toot my horn–but if I don’t, who will?–there is a cluster of anniversaries to recognise as achievements in my life and work for animal rights.… Read More
January 2018 feels like it is a long way off. But it is not. Not when now is the time to plan your attendance at the triennial Minding Animals International conference in Mexico on January 17-24. … Read More
My chapter, Are We Smart Enough to know when to take the Political Turn for Animals?, will be published in the new anthology, Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues, … Read More
The older I get the more I appreciate the colleagues who I have worked with for 30 years or more in animal rights. This appreciation becomes even more valuable when I think about Jill Howard Church. … Read More
I’ve never thought of myself as a change agent. Partly because this is one of those, frankly, American terms that sticks in my English throat. I prefer something more pompous like social justice advocate. … Read More
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to remove from its website information about animal welfare is an assault on the democratic rights of citizens who care about animals. It signals to commercial and other interests that their use of animals are even more protected from public scrutiny and accountability.… Read More
Today is my last day in my office in my adopted home town of Hastings, East Sussex. On Monday, I fly to the USA to spend the rest of this year as an independent consultant with Alley Cat Allies, who are based in Bethesda, MD.… Read More
In my book, Growl, I relate my two-year journey in the 1970s from being a meat-eating student working in a chicken slaughterhouse to a vegan working at Compassion In World Farming. The only vegetarian I knew was Amanda Young. … Read More
My colleague, Philip Wilson, very kindly donates to my animal rights archive a copy of William Swainson’s On the Habits and Instincts of Animals published in London in 1840.… Read More
In 2016, Ula Zarosa from Open Cages in Poland interviewed me about animal rights activism in theory and practice. This interview was after I spoke at the Open Cages conference in Warsaw in July. The interview focuses on several issues and in particular the development of the animal rights movement in Central and Eastern Europe.… Read More
In March 2016 the University of Kassel in Germany hosted a conference called Animal Biographies: Recovering Animal Selfhood through Interdisciplinary Narration? The conference was organised by Prof. Dr. Mieke Roscher and Dr. André Krebber. It was a great conference with many interesting papers. I was honoured to give my presentation, “Topsy, An Elephant We Must Never Forget.”… Read More