David John Holroyd

PhD title: What role should the state have in securing justice for animals?

As a postgraduate researcher in the fields of animal ethics and political theory, my research focuses on the role that political institutions should play to ensure just interspecies relations between humans and nonhuman animals. Contrary to the existing literature, I adopt a more critical view of the state by recognising that states can be ineffective or simply uninterested in achieving justice, and that over-reliance on the coercive authority of laws can undermine our moral agency. Not only does a less state-centric approach reveal the responsibilities of other political institutions within or above the state, but it highlights the need for animal justice to affect economic, social, and personal spheres of the polity too. Through these lines of enquiry, I explore how political institutions should balance human and animal interests, and the role for personal and social identity in securing justice. Feel free to contact me with questions.