Animals, Ethics, and Justice
Beyond the Human: Sharing the Planet with Nonhuman Animals
Starting next month, this new webinar series, organized and hosted by Dr. Kathrin Herrmann, explores what it means to live responsibly with other animals on a shared planet — and why animal protection, ethics, and justice are inseparable from the environmental and social challenges of our time.
Across societies, nonhuman animals are routinely treated as resources, tools, or background to human life — in science, food systems, cities, education, and environmental policy. Animals, Ethics, and Justice brings together scholars, educators, practitioners, and advocates to rethink these relationships through the lens of animal protection, ethics, and justice.
The series is grounded in the idea of multispecies justice: the recognition that animals are morally relevant beings whose lives are shaped by human institutions, and that protecting animals cannot be separated from addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and planetary health. Moving beyond a narrow focus on welfare or harm reduction, the series asks how our legal, economic, educational, and scientific systems can be transformed toward more ethical, just, and compassionate forms of coexistence.
Topics across the series will include human–animal relations, animal ethics, wildlife coexistence, companion animals, education and knowledge production, climate change, and the political and economic structures that shape life across species.
Inaugural Webinar
Getting Animal Ethics into Science Education: The Potential of Animal Perspective-Taking
Speaker: Dr. Adam Cardilini, Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia
Science education — including training and research — often operates with a very low threshold for justifying the use of nonhuman animals. Within higher education, this normalization of animal instrumentalization is reinforced by a lack of serious engagement with animal ethics. The result is a scientific culture that routinely justifies, and repeatedly commits, significant harms against animals.
Adam Cardilini’s work asks a simple but challenging question: What would science look like if we took animals’ interests seriously? In this talk, Adam will discuss his research on ethical principles and values for guiding science, with a particular focus on conservation science and education. He will present the design and impact of the Council of All Beings (CoAB) workshop, which he has delivered for the past three years in a Bachelor of Science program.
The CoAB workshop invites students to take the perspective of a nonhuman animal and to represent that animal’s interests in discussions aimed at improving Animal Care and Protection laws in Victoria, Australia. Student data shows that while the exercise can be challenging, it often leads to profound shifts in how students think about animals and animal ethics. The talk will also include practical tips for developing and delivering a Council of All Beings workshop in higher education.
About the Speaker
Dr Adam Cardilini is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Sciences at Deakin University, Australia. His work explores how knowledge, values, and relationships with nonhuman animals and nature shape science, environmental practice, and society. His research interests include animal ethics, animal perspective-taking, environmental values, and the impacts of animal use in science, field research, and education. He teaches units on the nature of science, science communication, ecology, and the environment.
Date: February 19, 2026
Time: 10:00 – 11:00 am CET / 8:00 – 9:00 pm AEDT
Format: Zoom webinar
Please register here in advance.