Karen Davis

Karen Davis, Ph.D. (KAREN DAVIS) is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns (UPC), a nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia. Inducted into the National Animal Rights Hall of Fame for Outstanding Contributions to Animal Liberation, she is the author of Prisoned Chickens, Poisoned Eggs: An Inside Look at the Modern Poultry Industry; More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality; The Holocaust and the Henmaid’s Tale: A Case for Comparing Atrocities and other works including her children’s book A Home for Henny and Instead of Chicken, Instead of Turkey: A Poultryless “Poultry” Potpourri, a vegan cookbook. A volume of Karen’s writings, For the Birds - From Exploitation to Liberation: Essays on Chickens, Turkeys, and Other Domestic Fowl, is being published in 2019 by Lantern Books.

Vasile Stanescu

Vasile Stanescu, Ph.D., serves, together with Professor Helena Pedersen (Malmö University, Sweden), as Senior Co-editor of the Critical Animal Studies Book Series, published by Rodopi Press. He also serves on the review board and is part of the “Editor Collective” (i.e. co-editor) for the Journal for Critical Animal Studies.  In 2010, Stanescu was chosen as the Tyke “Scholar of the Year” by the Institute for Critical Animal Studies.  CAF gave Vasile a grant to help fund his current research on the intersection of animal rights and environmentalism.
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John Sanbonmatsu

John Sanbonmatsu, Ph.D., is the author of The Omnivore's Deception:  What We Get Wrong about Meat, Animals, and the Nature of Moral Life (NYU Press, 2024), and editor of the book, Critical Theory and Animal Liberation and author of the book.  He is also author of The Postmodern Prince:  Critical Theory, Left Strategy, and the Making of a New Political Subject.  John is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where he teaches classes in ethics, social and political theory, and the philosophy of technology, and is the founder and designer of www.CleanMeat-Hoax.com.  You can read more about his work at www.JohnSanbonmatsu.com.
On Twitter:  @SanbonmatsuJ.

Justin Van Kleeck

Justin Van Kleeck has a Ph.D. in English and is a freelance writer, educator, and community organizer. Justin spends most of his time working at the Triangle Chicken Advocates microsanctuary, which he and his wife founded in 2014, and which inspired them to start The Microsanctuary Movement later that year. He also founded and contributes to the radical vegan blog Striving with Systems. Justin currently serves as the Sanctuary & Microsanctuary Advisor for A Well-Fed World.

Zipporah Weisberg

Zipporah Weisberg, Ph.D., is an independent scholar, animal liberation activist, and dancer living in Granada, Spain. She completed her Ph.D. in Social and Political Thought at York University (Toronto) in 2013. After that, Zipporah was the inaugural Abby Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellow in Animal Ethics in the Dept. of Philosophy at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario (2013-15). Zipporah specializes in critical animal studies, the critical theory of the early Frankfurt School, and existentialism and phenomenology. 
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Robert Jones

Robert C. Jones, Ph.D., is Associate Profesor of Philosophy at California State University, Chico, where he works on questions at the intersection of applied ethics, animal cognition, and social justice. His research focuses on nonhuman animal ethics, particularly the question, What is the moral significance of species membership? Robert is especially interested in the relationship between speciesism and social justice, the moral and environmental implications of modern food production, and the development of conceptual tools for a global, non-speciesist ethics. Robert has been a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University and a visiting researcher for the Ethics in Society Project at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and a Summer Fellow at the Animals & Society Institute.  He is also a member of the Advisory Council of The Animal Museum and a speaker with the Northern California Animal Advocacy Coalition.

JoAnn Farb

JoAnn Farb is a former microbiologist with a global pharmaceutical company, a nutrition educator, the mother of two lifelong vegan daughters and the author of Compassionate Souls -- Raising the Next Generation to Change the World. JoAnn is working on her third book, Gluten – The Science that Explains the Popularity of Paleo, Low-Carb and Keto, which answers why some people fail to thrive on plant-based diets, and how those who already avoid gluten can best reduce their future risk of chronic disease. She has a website and blog at www.JoAnnFarb.com.

Ashley Capps

Ashley Capps received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her first book of poems is Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields. The recipient of a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, she works as a writer, editor and researcher specializing in farmed animal welfare and vegan advocacy. Ashley has written for numerous animal justice organizations, and in addition to her ongoing work for A Well-Fed World, she is a writer and editor at Free from Harm.

Robert Grillo

Robert Grillo is an activist, author and speaker for all species rights. He is also the founder and director of Free from Harm, a  non profit dedicated to helping end animal exploitation.
As a communications professional for over 20 years, Grillo once worked on large food industry accounts where he acquired a behind-the-scenes perspective on food branding and marketing. His recent book, Farm to Fable: The Fictions of Our Animal-Consuming Culture explores the powerful narratives driving our culture of mass animal consumption.

Saryta Rodriguez

Saryta Rodríguez is an author, editor, social justice advocate, and educator. Their first book, Until Every Animal is Free, was published in October 2015 by Vegan Publishers, and their second book, Food Justice: A Primer, was published in July 2018 by Sanctuary Publishers. Saryta also contributed an essay and part of the Introduction to Veganism in an Oppressive World, which was published in November 2017 by Sanctuary Publishers.  www.sarytarodriguez.com

Stephen F. Eisenman

Stephen Eisenman, Ph.D., is Professor of Art History at Northwestern University and the author of The Abu Ghraib Effect (2007),  The Cry of Nature – Art and the Making of Animal Rights (2014), The Ghosts of Our Meat (2015), and (with Sue Coe) Zooicide: Seeing Cruelty, Demanding Abolition (2018).  He and Harriet Festing are co-founders of Anthropocene Alliance, a national non-profit that advocates for humans and animals harmed by environmental abuse and climate change.
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Carol Gigliotti

Carol Gigliotti, Ph.D., is an author, artist, and scholar whose work focuses on the impact of new technologies on animals and their lives. She is professor emeritus of Design and Dynamic Media at Emily Carr University of Design, Vancouver, BC.  She is the editor of the book, Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals and the author of numerous book chapters and journal essays on these topics. Her work is supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, The Sitka Center for the Arts, and The Reverie Foundation, among others.  Gigliotti has a BSS in Performance Studies, an MFA in Printmaking, and a doctorate from the Advanced Computing Center of Arts and Design at The Ohio State University.

Lori Girshick

Lori Girshick, Ph.D., has been a vegan for 37 years and an animal rights activist longer than that. A retired sociology professor, she is the author of five books, including Advocates for Animals: An Inside Look at Some of the Extraordinary Efforts to End Animal Suffering. Lori volunteers with Homeless Animals Rescue Team (HART) doing TNR and fostering, Wildhorse Ranch Rescue special projects, the Factory Farming Awareness Coalition (speaking to college students about factory farming and veganism), and is at PETA as a vegan mentor.

Michael John Addario

Michael John Addario is the editor and publisher of Animal Liberation Currents www.AnimalLiberationCurrents.com.  For more than twenty years he has been involved in animal rights activism, socialist organizing, the trade union movement and social democratic party work in Ontario. He has been a shop floor and staff organizer with several unions, including IFPTE, United Steelworkers and SEIU.

Arianna Ferrari

Arianna Ferrari, Ph.D., is Director of the Unit on Strategy and Content at The Futurium in Berlin, a new cultural space developed with the initiative of the Federal government as well as leading German science organizations, foundations, and other agencies.  The Futurium (opening in Sept. 2019) will explore different futures from the perspective of nature, humans, and technology.  Ferrari was formerly a research co-director at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at the University of Karlsruhe, where she led the first project on the topic of in vitro meat in Germany for the Federal Ministry of Research and Education (Visions of In vitro Meat). She is now external advisor for a project on "the meat of the future" for the Federal Environmental Agency in Berlin.  Though initially intrigued by the idea of in vitro meat, Ferrari now believes strongly that it is not a good idea--not for the animals, for the environment, or for human beings.  She has published a number of articles and books on animal ethics.

John Sorenson

John Sorenson, Ph.D., teaches Critical Animal Studies, globalization, and anti-racism.  His most recent book is Animal Rights (Fernwood Press). Other books include Ape; Culture of Prejudice: Arguments in Critical Social Science; Ghosts and Shadows: Construction of Identity and Community in an African Diaspora; Imagining Ethiopia: Struggles for History and Identity in the Horn of Africa; Disaster and Development in the Horn of Africa; and African Refugees.  Prof. Sorenson's recent SSHRC-funded research has been on the representation of nonhuman animals.  He has been involved with a number of Third World solidarity groups.