Visitor Programmes

The Centre operates Visiting Fellow and Visiting Researcher programmes to allow academics and practitioners to come to Cambridge to conduct their research, participate in events such as the Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy series, as well as to collaborate informally with members of the Centre and the University more broadly.

A list of current and former Visiting Fellows and Visiting Researchers can be found at the bottom of this page. View a report of our 2025 Visiting Researcher programme here.

Call for Applications Visiting Researchers and Visiting Fellows 2027

Our Centre invites applications for Visiting Researchers and Visiting Fellows for a research visit in Spring 2027. The purpose of these programmes is to enable researchers to work on a research project which will be ready for publication shortly after their visit. Applicants need to have a clearly developed proposal.

Applicants for the Visiting Researcher positions must either be in the course of completing a PhD or have completed a PhD no more than five years before 19 January 2027 (based on the date the degree was awarded). Applicants for the Visiting Fellowship positions must have a distinguished record of research or professional experience in the field, and be internationally recognised for their work.

Visiting Researchers are expected to visit the Centre for the 8-week Cambridge University Lent Term 2027 (19 January to 19 March 2027). Visiting Fellows are expected to visit the Centre for a period of between 4 and 8 weeks during Cambridge University Lent Term.

Our Visiting Researcher and Visiting Fellows programmes offer an exciting opportunity to become part of our Centre’s lively community. Visiting Researchers and Visiting Fellows will present and discuss their work in the Talking Animals, Law & Philosophy series and in our Visitors’ Workshop, and will have the opportunity to receive expert supervisions from senior academics (Visiting Researchers) or provide such supervisions to junior academics (Visiting Fellows). There will also be numerous other academic talks, weekly lunches, as well as other events and opportunities to connect with likeminded thinkers. We expect Visiting Researchers and Visiting Fellows to actively participate in all these events. For this purpose, they are required to live in Cambridge, and they must be substantially in Cambridge in person for the duration of their visit.

Funds of up to £2,000 ppn are available for Visiting Researchers and Visiting Fellows to contribute towards accommodation and travel expenses. Extra funding is available for candidates who can provide evidence that they would otherwise not be able to take up the position.

Applications should be sent by e-mail to Dr Carolina Leiva Ilabaca at carolina@animalrightslaw.org. The deadline for applications is 15 July 2026. Applicants should send the following materials as a PDF file: a CV with a list of publications, the names and contact details of two referees, and a 2-page outline of the research project that they will be submitting for publication at the end of or shortly after their research stay.

The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law is an academic charity dedicated to the study of fundamental rights for non-human animals. We are interested in candidates who explore research questions in this area. This includes, but is not limited to, candidates investigating whether animals would cease to be property, whether and which type of legal personhood they would have, what fundamental rights they might possess (and why), whether they should be given other protections (such as protection of their dignity), and how rights might be drafted. We are also open to applications from researchers approaching related questions from other disciplines than law.

In case you have questions about the positions, please contact Dr Leiva Ilabaca at carolina@animalrightslaw.org.

Recent Visiting Fellows

Professor Angela Fernandez, Professor and Director of the Animal Law Program at the Henry N.R. Jackman Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto with a cross-appointment in the Department of History, was a Visiting Fellow at our Centre in Lent 2026. During her time in Cambridge, she worked on several projects, including quasi-personhood and rights of nature.

  • Marcia Condoy Truyenque, Doctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki, visited our Centre in Lent 2026 to work on her project on animal individualhood.

    El Jones, Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics, Economics, and Canadian Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, was a Visiting Researcher at our Centre in Lent 2024. Her research was centred on police dogs and connections between race, Black feminism, and animal oppression. 

    Serrin Rutledge-Prior, Research Fellow with the Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy, was a Visiting Researcher at our Centre in Lent 2024. Her researchfocused on the relationship between animal rights and rights of nature.

    Michaël Lessard, SJD student at the University of Toronto, visited our Centre in Lent 2023. His research was focused on the legal recognition of animal sociability and agency, and how this could complete the ongoing legal recognition of animal sentience.

    Paulina Siemieniec, PhD Candidate in the Philosophy Department at Queen’s University, visited our Centre in Lent 2023. Her research dealt with the legal rights domesticated animalsshould have to Sexual and Reproductive Health, including the right to agency in sexual and reproductive decision-making processes.

    Katharina Braun, PhD candidate in Law at Freie Universität Berlin, visited our Centre in Lent 2022. She worked on a project that analysed whether consent or a related concept can beemployed to distinguish between permissible and impermissible human-animal interactions

    Carolina Leiva Ilabaca, PhD candidate in Law at the University of Chile and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, was a Visitor to our Centre in Lent 2022. Her research examined different approaches to animal subjecthood.

    Ankita Shanker, PhD in Law candidate at the University of Basel, was an externally-funded visitor to the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law from April-September 2021. During herstay, she identified the content, strength, and limits of fundamental animal rights and personhood, relying on foundational principles of fundamental rights law and legal theories.

    Eva Bernet Kempers, PhD candidate at the University of Antwerp in Belgium, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2021. Her research at the Centre focused on developing an alternative account of legal personhood that goes beyond the binary and court-based accounts that are dominant in the common law.

    Joshua Jowitt, Lecturer in Law at Newcastle University, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2021. During his stay at the Centre, Josh developed a natural lawaccount of the normative foundations of legal personhood and explored its implications in the case of Happy the elephant.

    Pablo Pérez Castelló, PhD candidate in Philosophy at Royal Holloway University of London, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2021. His research explored howthe constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia should change if wild animals were given a right to self-determination.

    Nick Ampt, PhD candidate at the Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2020 as one of our two first Visiting Students. Nick pursued a research project dealing with different legal statuses that the law can award to animals and other beings.

    Robyn Trigg, non-practising solicitor and full-time DPhil in Law student at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, visited the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law in Lent 2020 asone of our two first Visiting Students. Her research probed the dualisms on which current animal laws and animal rights proposals are based.

  • Justin Marceau is a Professor of Law, the Brooks Institute Faculty Research Scholar of Animal Law and Policy, and the Faculty Director of the Animal Law Program at Sturm College of Law, University of Denver, USA. He was a Visiting Fellow at our Centre in Lent 2025.

    Małgorzata Lubelska Sazanów is an Assistant Professor at the University of Silesia, Poland. She was a Visiting Fellow at our Centre in Lent 2026.

    Sergio Dellavalle is Professor of Public Law and State Theory at the University of Turin, Italy, and was the first Visiting Fellow at our Centre in Lent and Easter 2024. His research centred on this forthcoming book ‘A Republic of Fellow Sufferers: How to Grant Rights to Nature’, which explores different strategies to justify the attribution of rights to non-human natural entities.

Professor Saul Olyan, Samuel Ungerleider Jr. Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University, was a Visiting Fellow at our Centre in Lent 2026, working on a paper addressing whether Isaiah 66:3 equates animal sacrifice with murder.