Conferences
Our Centre organises regular conferences exploring animal rights law. Our flagship conference is the biennial European Animal Rights Law Conference.
Conferences are longer events than workshops and are usually focused on a broader range of topics. They are part of our Centre’s mission to promote research that explores and develops the key themes in animal rights law, and to make that research accessible to a broader audience.
Past Conferences
The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law hosted its fifth European Animal Rights Law Conference on 4-6th September 2025 at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
The theme of this Conference was “Animal Rights in Legislation” and featured a rich programme of presentations, Q&As, and keynote addresses exploring the Conference theme.
Our 2025 Conference Keynote Speakers included Dr Visa Kurki (Associate Professor of Jurisprudence, University of Helsinki) and Dr Saskia Stucki (Senior Lecturer & Researcher, ZHAW; Researcher, University of Zürich).
Presentations by Conference participants can be viewed on the conference playlist on YouTube including a welcome introduction by the Centre’s co-founders, or find individual talks below. You can also download the programme as a PDF file.
European Animal Rights Law Conference 2025
Watch the talks from our 2025 Conference
European Animal Rights Law Conference 2023
The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law hosted its fourth annual European Animal Rights Law Conference on 12-13th August 2023 at Clare College, Cambridge.
2023’s Conference was on the theme “Animal Rights in Litigation” and featured leading animal rights judges from around the world in a special panel entitled “Judging Animal Rights”. The event also brought together influential academics from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, the UK, and the US. The keynote address on "Animalization and Dehumanization Concerns: Another Psychological Barrier to Animal Law Reform" was delivered by Professor Maneesha Deckha (University of Victoria).
Presentations by Conference participants can be viewed on the conference playlist on YouTube including a welcome introduction by the Centre’s co-founders, or find individual talks below. You can also download the programme as a PDF file.
Watch the talks from our 2023 Conference
European Animal Rights Law Conference 2022
The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law hosted its annual European Animal Rights Law Conference on 17-18th September 2022 at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge. The event brought together leading academics from the UK, Germany, Italy, Finland, Belgium, France, and the US. Keynote addresses were delivered by Dr Richard Ryder (RSPCA) and Professor Justin Marceau (University of Denver, Sturm College of Law).
The presentations by Conference participants were divided into four themed panels. You can access the conference playlist on YouTube including Dr Raffael Fasel’s welcome. You can also download the programme as a PDF file if preferred.
Watch the talks from our 2022 Conference
European Animal Rights Law Conference 2021
The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law hosted the European Animal Rights Law Conference from 17-18th September 2021 in the Woolf Institute on the Westminster College site in Cambridge. The event brought together leading academics from the UK, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Poland.
You can access the conference playlist on YouTube including Dr Raffael Fasel’s welcome, or find individual talks below.
The presentations by Conference participants were divided into four themed panels:
Animals and Agency
Animal Rights Constitutionalism
Property, Personhood and Basic Rights
Animals and War
You can also download the programme as a PDF file if preferred. Posters and presentations were on display for each talk, and can be downloaded through the linked titles.
Watch the talks from our 2021 Conference
European Animal Rights Law Conference 2019
The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law hosted the first European Animal Rights Law Conference from 14-15th September 2019. The event, which took place at St Edmund’s College, Cambridge, brought together animal rights law scholars and practitioners from Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, Israel, Ireland, Poland, Finland, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US.
The Conference started in the morning of September 14th with an introduction by Dr Sean Butler and Dr Raffael Fasel. Dr Butler welcomed the 15 speakers and 50 guests, and explained how the Conference fits into the broader range of activities organised by the Centre. Dr Fasel then described the emerging discipline of animal rights law, and proposed the adoption of a pragmatic approach to animal rights, which does not get caught up in labels such as “welfarism” or “abolitionism”. Addressing the Conference’s focus on Europe, Dr Fasel said that;
“ … while there are important dissimilarities between the animal laws of different European states, there are also important similarities—not least thanks to the Council of Europe and the EU. To build much-needed capacities not only in animal rights law scholarship, but also in animal rights law practice, it therefore seemed to make sense to us to first leverage existing European synergies. The mission of our Centre, however, is not only to draw together what already exists but, more importantly, to help build a European community of animal rights lawyers and thereby to generate new synergies …”
The ensuing presentations by the Conference participants were divided into five different panels (you can download the programme as a PDF file).
Watch the 2019 European Animal Rights Law Conference Keynote Address