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Home › Calendar › “The Grounds of Moral Status: Sentience and (a bit) Beyond”, Will Gildea

“The Grounds of Moral Status: Sentience and (a bit) Beyond”, Will Gildea

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When:
30 January 2025 12 h 00 – 13 h 15
Where:
Room 309, CRE, hybrid
2910 Edouard-Montpetit, Montreal
  • ENVIRONMENTAL AND ANIMAL ETHICS
William Gildea

In our Midi de l’éthique series, Will Gildea will offer a presentation titled The Grounds of Moral Status: Sentience and (a bit) Beyond.

To join via Zoom, click here.

 

Related events

  • May 26 Tue 2026

    David J. Holroyd (University of Sheffield) @ Room 309, CRE, hybrid

    12 h 00 – 13 h 30

    • Environmental and animal ethics

    The CRÉ, the Social Justice Centre (SJC) and the Research Group on Environmental and Animal Ethics (GRÉEA) are pleased to welcome David J. Holroyd (University of Sheffield), who will give a talk entitled Navigating the Leviathan: A Skeptical Ethos for Animal Politics.

    Abstract

    Within contemporary Animal Politics, the state is frequently positioned as the primary vehicle for justice, with animals framed as the ‘next frontier’ for integration via legal rights and representation. However, this extensionist approach frequently overlooks the state’s historic role in facilitating the systemic exclusion and political subordination of nonhuman animals. Given this reality, how should animalist scholars orient themselves toward the state?

    This presentation proposes a skeptical ethos toward the state, moving beyond the binary of statist optimism and anarchist dismissal. The talk addresses three core features of this orientation:

    1)     Recognising historical realities: State-building projects have historically caused many animal injustices, undermining the state’s presumed emancipatory potential.

    2)     Engaging with imperfect institutions: Political complexities must be navigated case-by-case, since an outright rejection of statist approaches may expose animals to more severe injustices.

    3)     Expanding political imaginations: To envisage radical forms of politics beyond the anthropocentric status quo, one must step outside an exclusively statist framework for ‘doing politics’.

    By cultivating a skeptical ethos, scholars (and activists) can move beyond entrenched dogmas to discover more reliable, nuanced, and effective modes of political engagement with the Leviathan.

    Biography:

    David John Holroyd is a PhD candidate in political theory at the University of Sheffield, funded by the White Rose College of Arts and Humanities. His research broadly addresses the themes of animal justice, state power, social identity, and the role of academic ideas in public debate.

    Chair:

    Juliette Roussin (Université Laval).

    To participate on Zoom, click here (Meeting ID: 704 532 7051; Secret code: 9Me2EW).

    Read more

  • Aug 6 Thu 2026

    Animals at Large: Critical Animal Studies Perspectives on Wild, Feral, and Free-Living Animals @ SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation, J.W. McConnell Building, Concordia University

    6 Aug – 7 Aug All day

    • Environmental and animal ethics

    Animals at Large: CAS Perspectives on Wild, Feral, and Free-Living Animals is co-organized by the Canadian Society for Critical Animal Studies, the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en éthique (CRÉ) and the Social Justice Centre at Concordia University, the Groupe de recherche en éthique animale et environnementale (GREEA) and the Observatoire québécois en droit animalier (OQDA) based at the Université de Sherbrooke.

    The conference will be hybrid, register here.

    Program

    Animals at Large: CAS Perspectives on Wild, Feral, and Free-Living Animals

    August 6

    8:30 – 9:00 Arrival/Continental breakfast, coffee/tea/juice available

    9:00 – 10:15 – Welcome and Opening Keynote: Catia Faria

    10:15 – 10:30 – Coffee/tea Break

    10:30 – 12:00 – Wild Politics 

    • Pablo Castello, “The Territorial Rights of Wild Animals: Justification”
    • Agata Kowaleska, “Feralizing: Reimagining Future Liberations in Europe”
    • Christiane Bailey, “Renouncing violence and doing politics with wild and liminal animals in Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Animals and the right to politics”

    12:00 – 1:00 – Catered Lunch

    1:00 – 2:30 – Wild Horses

    • Sabine Sassner, “Movement vs. Behaviour: Visibility and Agency of Equines”
    • Lucy Horswill, “From ‘Semi-Wild’ to Surplus: Language and Disposal at British Drift Sales”
    • Kelly Struthers Montford & Chloë Taylor, “Wild Mustang Prison Programs in the American Southwest”

    2:30 – 2:45 – Coffee/tea Break

    2:45 – 4:15 – Vermin, Pests, and Invasive Species

    • Karen Morin, “An ‘Animal Turn’ for Rats?”
    • Mathieu Chaput & Jacinthe Dupuis, “The Communicative Constitution of Liminal Animals in the ‘Deer Saga’”
    • Zoei Sutton and Kate Hall, “Feral Catastrophe: Analyzing the Narrative Construction of Australian Cats”

    4:15 – 4:30 – Coffee/tea Break

    4:30 – 6:00 – Intersection of Behavioural Ecology and Critical Animal Studies: The Ethical Costs and Benefits of Primate Research in Wild, Free-Ranging, and Rehabilitative Contexts 

    • Mikaela Gerwing (facilitator), Nève Djevalikian-Couture (presenter), Italo Ferreira Perreira (presenter), Maya Moghrabi (presenter), Viviane Aurora Oliviera (presenter), & Brogan M. Stewart (presenter)

    August 7

    8:30 – 9:00 – Arrival/Continental breakfast, coffee/tea/juice available

    9:00 – 10:30 – Sanctuary and Salvation 

    • Darren Chang (remote from Australia), “Contesting Wildness: The Farmed Animal Sanctuary as Liminal Contact Zone”
    • Sal Renshaw, “Saving By Any Other Name: Sanctuaries, Arks, and the Governance of Animal Lives in the Anthropocene”
    • Stephanie Eccles, “Farmed Animals in Extreme Weather Events: Disaster Response Pathways and Foreclosures of Wildness”

    10:30 – 10:45 – Coffee/tea break

    10:45 – 12:15 – Animal Capital 

    • Esther Palm, “Travail Animal et critique du sauvage en théorie politique”
    • Briana Magnuson & Tony Weis, “HPAI in the Wild: A Critical Analysis of Media Coverage of the Panzootic Crisis”
    • Branislava Vičar, “The Conservation Discourse of Native Animal Species as Nationalist Narrative: The Case of the Marble Trout”

    12:15 – 1:15 – Catered Lunch

    1:15 – 2:45 – Feral Intimacies: Care and Control in Interspecies Relations

    • Misha Solomon, “Goon at Love Park”
    • Ishaan Selby, “‘Big, Furry, Asymmetrical Balls’: Wildness, Feral Sex, and Ownership in Marian Engel’s Bear”
    • Jesse Arsenault, “The Wildness of Interspecies Desire in South African Literature and Law”

    2:45 – 3:00 – Coffee/tea break

    3:00 – 4:30 – The Wild and the Monstrous

    • Emelia Quinn, “When Animals Attack: The Comedy and Camp of Wild Animal Revenge”
    • Emily Major, “The Boogeymen of Our Forests: Anti-Possum Rhetoric and the Construction of Fear in Dominant Conservation Messaging in New Zealand”
    • Ian Hanesworth, “Wolf Mothers & Man Things: Agency, Emotionality, and Personhood in Ursula LeGuin’s ‘The Wife’s Story’”

    4:45 – 6:00 – Closing Keynote: Stephanie Rutherford, “Canids and Canada: Wolves, Coyotes and Regimes of Violence and Belonging”

    6:00 – 7:00 – Closing Reception

    Read more

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