Panel Discussion with Dr David Bilchitz, Dr Richard Ryder, and Ruud Tombrock

Описание: On the third and final day of our Centre's European Animal Rights Law Conference 2025, we held a panel discussion with Ruud Tombrock (Humane Society International), Richard Ryder (psychologist and animal rights advocate), and David Bilchitz (Professor of Law, University of Johannesburg and Reading) moderated by Dr Carolina Leiva Ilabaca and Dr Eva Bernet Kempers (Junior Research Associates at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law) during our 'Past lessons and future prospects' block.

About the panelists:

Dr David Bilchitz is a Professor of Law at the University of Johannesburg and the University of Reading. He served as an Acting Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa to May 2024. He is Vice-President of the International Association of Constitutional Law. Prof Bilchitz has written seminal articles on the status and legal entitlements of animals in South Africa. He is a director of Animal Law Reform South Africa and has co-taught the first course on animal law in South Africa.

Dr Richard Ryder read experimental psychology at Cambridge, receiving a PhD in political & social sciences. He was an RSPCA Trustee for 50 years, founded Eurogroup, worked for IFAW and played a leading role in stopping the hunting of hounds. He wrote a dozen books on animal protection and coined the words 'speciesism' and 'painism', now in many dictionaries. He was involved in 56 Animal Welfare Legislative reforms in UK and EU, becoming President of the RSPCA in 2019.

Ruud Tombrock is the Executive Director of Humane World for Animals-Europe, one of the world's largest animal protection organizations. He leads the organization's EU-wide work on improving legal protections for animals, with a focus on issues such as animal testing and farm animal welfare. Under his leadership, the European branch grew from a one-person office to a multi-country operation with over 30 staff and campaigns in eight EU member states. He is a leading voice in European animal protection.

About the moderators:

Dr Eva Bernet Kempers is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp's Animal & Law Chair and Junior ResearchAssociate at the Cambridge Centre. She obtained her PhD on animal dignity at Antwerp, and has held visiting positions in Helsinki, Heidelberg, and Cambridge. She coordinates the Centre's Teaching Network, supporting animal rights law lecturers worldwide. Her research explores the legal status of animals in continental civil law, and she teaches an annual summer school on animal law, rights and representation. Her work for the Centre combines academic research with organising Law Lecturers' Workshops for lecturers aiming to design their own animal rights law course.

Dr Carolina Leiva Ilabaca is Junior Research Associate at the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law and a lawyer with a Masters in Animal Law and Society and a PhD in Law from the University of Chile and the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She is also a lecturer in Criminal Law and Animal Law. She serves as visiting professor at universities in Europe and Latin America, and is the author of the Spanish translation of Animal Rights Law (Fasel and Butler, 2023). Research interests encompass Criminal Law, Legal Philosophy, and Animal Rights Law & Ethics.

The Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law is an academic centre dedicated to the study, understanding and promotion of fundamental rights for non-human animals, based in Cambridge, UK. Find more information at https://animalrightslaw.org/

The views expressed in these presentations are those of the respective speakers and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law.