Happy Holidays from Canterbury!
Sweet friends,
Another year of COVID has come to a close and I'm at home writing and listening to music with my beautiful rescue dog Mishka and our newest family member, Keeley Jr. (a kitten I adopted last month). I normally prefer to adopt adult cats as they are harder for rescues to rehome, but I went with a kitten this time as I've just had a rough couple of years having lost both of my senior cats. I needed a break from grieving. Also, I was hoping a kitten would adapt to Mishka's rambunctiousness--which she has! What a little terror! I forget how wild kittens are!
 Keeley Jr. isn't the only wild thing to come out of 2021. Notably, I celebrated the publication of my third book and hosted the 2nd annual meeting of the International Association of Vegan Sociologists. I gave so many invited talks and conference presentations along the way, I can't even keep track anymore. On October 21st, I was so honored to welcome Dr Kate Stewart and Dr Matthew Cole to my university's faculty seminar series. Matthew and Kate have been hugely impactful on my research and have been dear mentors from my graduate school days. They came the day before my birthday, so we had a good time in the Canterbury pubs afterward!
It wasn't all happy days, though. In addition to the persistent pandemic, I mourned the loss of my dear little Trudy, a cat I adopted 6 years ago in the United States. Her final moments were not so great (euthanasia came just in time, actually), but her last day was mostly free of suffering and full of sunshine. In November, we also lost Bernie Rollin. Bernie is one of the "Old Guard" animal rights scholars who had been publishing on the topic since the 1970s. I had the interesting experience of taking his class as a PhD student at Colorado State University back in 2009. We didn't agree on a lot of things, but I think it's fair to say that we learned a lot from each other.
Anyway, cheers to you all. I plan to take a break from a lot of service work and conferences next year so I can focus on writing my next books: Vegan Sociology and Vegan Feminism. Thanks for making this year amazing.
With love from my desk to yours,
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USA Today
PETA has launched a new anti-leather campaign depicting fashion items made with human skin. In this news piece, I'm joined with other sociologists who comment on the efficacy of moral shocks in social movements.
Read here >>
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Thrive Vegan World
In this episode, I join host Wendy McGovern to chat about my research on the professionalisation of animal rights organisations and how this is detrimental to a radical abolitionist message. We explore the importance of an evidence-based focus for effective activism, and why the science backs an interconnected approach. We discuss the sociology of the movement through a vegan feminist lens and look at how we can dismantle the misogyny within.
Listen here >>
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Animals in Irish Society Book Launch
I was privileged to participate in a book launch with Animal Liberation Currents in support of my new book, Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony. I was joined by ALF veterans sociologist Roger Yates and Mark Fitzpatrick to discuss some of the book highlights and forgotten Irish activism of the late 20th century. Currents editor Michael John Addario served as moderator. This event was recorded but is not yet published. Subscribe to ALC for alerts.
Follow Animal Liberation Currents >>
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Animals in Irish Society, Anti-Speciesism, and Globalization
Ecologist and animal ethicist Dr. Marc Beckoff graciously read my new book Animals in Irish Society: Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony. In this interview with Psychology Today, we chatted about the complex relationships among cultural values and climate change, public health, and animal welfare and how much there is to learn from looking at the place of Nonhuman Animals in the history of Ireland's remarkable changes. Marc notes that veganism isn't a radical view, but rather a practical one that informs the fair and just choices people constantly make.
Read here >>
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The Animal Rights Show - World Vegan Day Celebration
Fellow vegan sociologist Lynda Korimboccus joins me as a guest panellist on the Animal Rights Show's World Vegan Day event. This episode includes explorations of the shifting landscape and evolution of veganism from the early days of the Vegan Society, to the present day as a growing but increasingly fractious movement.
Watch here >>
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Conferences and Invited Talks
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ECPR Environmental Politics Online Seminar Series
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V-Rated: Sexualization as a Mechanism of Food Justice Depoliticization
January 13, 2022
Earlier this year I gave this talk to the British Sociological Association, a paid event. I'll be giving the same talk at a free event with the ECPR Environmental Politics Online Seminar Series. In this talk, I unpack the sexual politics of veganism and demonstrate how sexualization is used to disempower veganism.
Register here >>
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Institute of Historical Research Food History Seminar Series
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Gaelic Vegetarianism and Veganism & Colonial Resistance
February 10, 2022
In support of my newest book, Animals in Irish Society, I will be presenting a talk on plant-based food history in Ireland. Like many colonial spaces, the land, people, and politics of Ireland were intimately shaped by human-nonhuman relations. This talk covers the history of vegetarianism in Ireland, the colonial aggravation of speciesist foodways, and the present-day treatment of vegan discourse in the Irish media.
Register here >>
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American Humanist Association
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Why Animal Rights is a Humanist Issue
April 20, 2022
Although most animal rights activists identify as atheist or agnostic, the atheist/humanist community has traditionally been unwilling to apply reasoned thought to speciesism and expand its circle of concern to other animals. This talk outlines some of the humanist/atheist traditions in the animal rights movement and highlights some of the core reasons why animal liberation and veganism align with a humanist approach.
Register for the free event here >>
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EcoGeography Society, University of Kent
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Eco-Feminism
November 24, 2021
I was asked by my university's eco-geography society to speak on the topic of vegan ecofeminism. This talk is based on a regular lecture I give with my Environmental Politics class and covers the origins of ecofeminism, major critiques, and some intersectional failures in environmental and vegan activism. I discuss some of my own research as well as contemporary research validating vegan feminist theory.
View the talk here >>
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2021 Northeast Popular Culture Association Annual Conference
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Vegan Food Culture
October 23, 2021
I presented a talk on vegan food culture with the Northeast Popular & American Culture Association in late October. Veganism has long been stereotyped as a diet of paucity and tastelessness. In spite of much ridicule and resistance, veganism nonetheless seems to be reaching a tipping point in popularity, cultural assimilation, and institutional accommodation in the West. This presentation reviews the sociological literature on the cultural practices of vegan eating. It also outlines persistent and emerging symbolic meanings and behaviors that can be found in potlucks, care packages, recipe sharing, outreach tabling, cooking demonstrations, feed-ins, vegan restaurants, and more.
View the talk here >>
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2021 International Association of Vegan Sociologists Conference
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The Vegan Promise: 2nd Annual Vegan Sociology Conference
October 9th and 10th, 2021
Our 2nd annual virtual meeting was a huge success with over 160 registrants and nearly 30 presenters. Founders in vegan sociology such as Jessica Greenebaum, Liz Cherry, Matthew Cole, Kate Stewart, and Erika Cudworth presented. We were also delighted to host many emerging scholars and students. The animal groups of the American Sociological Association, Australian Sociological Association, British Sociological Association, Canadian Sociological Association, and Polish Sociological Association were represented with panels in addition to three individual panels on topics of agency, activism, and food. Recordings of the panels are now available on the IAVS Youtube channel.
Watch the panels here >>
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Collaborating Against Speciesism: The Oxford Group and Social Innovation
Oral History Journal, December 2021
Most Nonhuman Animal rights historians have heard tell of the mythical Oxford Group, a small group of Oxford philosophy graduate students, their partners, and a smattering of associated scholar-activists responsible for some of the first and most influential advances in modern anti-speciesist thought. Most Nonhuman Animal rights academics and activists, for that matter, are familiar with the work of Oxford star and movement ‘father’ Peter Singer. Yet, despite this notoriety, few are actually familiar with the inner workings of the group, nor the development of Singer’s work in context.
Read here >>
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Animals in Irish Society
Interspecies Oppression and Vegan Liberation in Britain's First Colony
My third book on intersections of colonial oppression, speciesism, and anti-speciesist resistance is now available for preorder through New York University Press. Paperbacks are available January 2022.
Learn more >>
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In memory of little Trudy.
Adopted October 18, 2015, died September 16, 2021.
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