CONTRIBUTOR BIOS
ETHAN BROWN founded Beyond Meat in 2009 to produce plant-based products that replicated meat and to attempt to eliminate the downsides of the meat industry in the process. The inspiration for Beyond Meat began for Brown in “chicken country,” where as a young boy he spent weekends on his family farm in rural Maryland. Beyond Meat's products are available in Whole Foods and many other chains across the U.S. The company's 25/20 Vision aims at 25% reduced global meat consumption by 2020.
MATTHEW CALARCO is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Cal State University-Fullerton. Calarco works primarily at the intersection of Continental philosophy and animal/environmental philosophy. He is also actively involved in a wide range of social justice issues and movements that inform his approach to scholarship. His books include:
- Radicalizing Levinas . Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2010. (co-edited with Peter Atterton)
- The Death of the Animal (with Paola Cavalieri, J. M. Coetzee, Harlan Miller, and Cary Wolfe). New York: Columbia University Press, 2009.
- Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida . New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
JAYA BHUMITRA is the Director of Corporate Outreach, Mercy for Animals, encouraging major food retailers, grocery stores, and fast-food giants to adopt and strengthen animal welfare policies. She also collaborates with restaurant franchises to expand consumers’ easy access to compassionate, plant-based foods. Jaya spent four years spearheading corporate outreach as campaigns director for another nonprofit animal protection organization, but she honed her professional skills in the private sector. Previously, she had served multinational clients and trade associations, including Pfizer, Merck, Novartis, and PhRMA, at global public affairs firm APCO Worldwide for five years, one of which she spent in New Delhi establishing the company’s Indian operation.
AARON GROSS is Assistant Professor, Theology and Religious Studies at University of San Diego. Gross is a historian of religions who focuses on modern and contemporary Jewish thought and ethics. He has a sub-specialty in South Asian religious traditions. Thematically Gross’s work centers on the study of animals and religion, and food and religion. He is active in the leadership of the Society for Jewish Ethics and the American Academy of Religion’s Animals and Religion Group, and founded and serves as CEO of the nonprofit advocacy organization, Farm Forward. His books include:
- The Question of the Animal and Religion: Theoretical Stakes, Practical Implications (Columbia University Press, 2015)
- Animals and the Human Imagination: A Companion to Animal Studies, Edited by Aaron Gross and Anne Vallely. Foreword by Jonathan Safran Foer and Epilogue by Wendy Doniger (Columbia Univ Press, 2012)
CAROL J. ADAMS is the author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, released in 2015 in a 25th anniversary edition as part of Bloomsbury’s Revelations series. She is also the author of many other books, most recently Never Too Late to Go Vegan: The Over-50 Guide to Adopting and Thriving on a Plant-Based Diet and the co-edited volume (with Lori Gruen), Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth. She has been involved in social justice activism including on behalf of the other animals for more than forty years.
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MICHAEL MARDER is Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain, working in the fields of phenomenology, environmental philosophy, and political thought. He is the author of several books including:
EILEEN CRIST is Associate Professor in the Department of Science and Technology in Society at Virginia Tech University. In addition to her teaching, Crist's work was shaped by studying environmental evolution (Gaia theory) with Lynn Margulis in Amherst , MA early in her career. She is author of Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal Mind. She is also coeditor of a number of books, including Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis, Life on the Brink: Environmentalists Confront Overpopulation, and Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth. Eileen is author of numerous papers and contributor to the late journal Wild Earth. She lives in Blacksburg, Virginia with her husband Rob Patzig where they also teach yoga together.
BRIANNE DONALDSON is co-coordinator of FMA, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Monmouth College, as well as an independent researcher for Vegan Outreach. She explores the intersection of Indian and western metaphysics, critical animal studies, and religion and science. Her work aims to widen notion of the political, moral, and embodied community to include co-creative entities currently divided out as so-called animals, plants, and ecosystems. Donaldson is the author of Creaturely Cosmologies: Why Metaphysics Matters for Animal and Planetary Liberation (Lexington Books 2015) and an edited collection Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: A Common World for Animals and the Environment (Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2014).
STEVEN MCMULLEN is Assistant Professor of Economics at Hope College. His work weaves together Labor Economics, Economics of Education, and Environmental and Animal Ethics. Select publications include:
- Examining the Place of Ethics in Economics: A Review. Review of Social Economy, 2014.
- Humane Eating in an Inhumane Economy. Perspectives, 2012
- Can Economists speak for Farmed Animals? A Review. Journal of Animal Ethics, 2013.
- Is Capitalism to Blame? Animal Lives in the Marketplace. Forthcoming in the Journal of Animal Ethics.
SONG TIAN is a Associate Professor at the Institute for History and Philosophy of Science at Beijing Normal University. He works at the junction of philosophy of science, history of science, anthropology of science, environmental history, environmental philosophy, and interdisciplinary case studies. His publications include The Skepticism in the Age of Limited Earth: Will the Future World be Made of Garbage? (2008), and At Home in the Universe (2007), both of which were awarded a Wenjin Book Prize from the Chinese National Library.
VASILE STANESCU is an Assistant Professor of Communication and Theater, and Director for the Program in Speech and Debate at Mercer University. He is the co-founder and co-editor of the Critical Animal Studies book series published by Brill/ Rodopi Press. He has authored, or co-authored, twelve peer-reviewed publications on topics related to critical animal studies, invasive species, environmentalism, locavorism, and "humane" meat. Stanescu‘s research has been recognized by: Minding Animals International, The Woods Institute for the Environment, The Andrew Mellon Foundation, Institutul Cultural Român, and the Culture and Animals Foundation. He is currently working on a book project entitled: Happy Meals: Animals, Nature, and the Myth of Consent.
ADAM WOLPA is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Calvin College. Adam grew up in Los Angeles, and studied at The University of Virginia, where he earned a BA in Studio Art, and at the University of Iowa, where he earned an MA and an MFA in Printmaking. In addition to providing the conference image atop these pages, and giving an interactive talk during the conference, Adam will be presenting part of an exhibit titled "putting it all together: objects for the storage and transmission of speciesist ideologies." You can see more of his work here.
ZANDRA WAGONER is Interfaith Chaplain and Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of LaVerne. She is the Founding Program Chairperson of the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at ULV and co-founder of Interreligious Voices for Animal Compassion. Her areas of scholarship include women in religion, feminist and queer theories and animals in religion and science, especially exploring the tragic and tender connections between human-animal creatures, and the role religion plays at this intersection. Dr. Wagoner is currently on the Board of the Brethren/Mennonite Council for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Interests.
CHRISTOPHER CARTER (Claremont School of Theology) investigates religion, ethics, and society with an emphasis on Environmental Ethics and Africana Studies. Chris serves on the Animals and Religion steering committee of the American Academy of Religion which provides him critical insight to the fields of animal studies and food studies as they relate to religion. His work as a food justice advocate, particularly in poor, ethnic minority communities—such as establishing community feeding programs in Battle Creek, MI and Compton, CA—gives him unique insight into the potential of meatless meat in urban settings. He is a prolific writer and sought after speaker on the themes of food justice, black identity, and the political economy of food.
- 2014 “Eating Food and Justice,” Reflections Magazine, Yale University
- 2013 “Loving in Truth and Action,” The Humane Steward, The Humane Society of the United States
REBEKAH SINCLAIR (University of Oregon) is an academic and activist, currently writing, lecturing, and living in Claremont, California. Her work, which is both theoretically and ethically oriented, probes contemporary cultural and philosophical thought on speciesed bodies (those previously designated “animals”) with the hope that we might increasingly broaden the spectrum of lives we choose to recognize, care for, love, and live well with. Selected works include:
- “Animals, Aliens, and (Dis)Abled Bodies: A Post-structural, Comparative Review of Avatar and District 9.” Journal of Critical Animal Studies, V. 12: 2, May 2014.
- “Despicable Hierarchies and Indefensible Limits: Deconstructing Species in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism” in Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature: A Common World for Animals and the Environment, Edited by Brianne Donaldson, Cambridge Scholars Publishing (forthcoming 2015).
- “Of Mites and Men: Animality, Bare Life, and the Reperformance of the Human in The Open.” Culture Critique, V. 2, Spring, 2011.
MICHAEL ANDERSON (Graduate Theological Union) is a scholar in St. Louis, Missouri and an Instructor of Religion at McKendree University in Lebanon, Illinois. He received his Master's in Religion at Claremont School of Theology with a concentration in Ethics, Politics & Society. His research pursues the intersections of animal ethics, queer and feminist theories, and the study of religion.
BRIAN HENNING is Professor of Philosophy and Environmental Studies at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington. In addition to teaching classes in Philosophy of Human Nature, Environmental Ethics,and Ethics
of Global Climate Change, he is also creating a Sustainability Across the Curriculum initiative called the Cataldo Project. Among Brian's many projects, he is author of:
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JOEY TUMINELLO is a doctoral candidate and Teaching Fellow in Philosophy at the University of North Texas, and an Associate Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. His research interests lie at the intersection of animal and environmental philosophy, and include aesthetics, Asian philosophy, and the philosophy of food. Joey is also a Program Coordinator for the nonprofit advocacy organization Farm Forward, where his work largely focuses on education initiatives promoting inquiry into the nature of food production and industrial agriculture.
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