he international seminar Challenging Anthropocentrism in Multi-Species Governance, Law and Policy will take place online on October 16, starting at 11 a.m. Dinesh Wadiwel (University of Sydney) and Kimberley Graham will be the guest speakers at this virtual event, co-organized by the Human-Animal Studies Hub, the ABIDE project, and the University of Oulu. Participation is free.

In this conversation Kimberley Graham and Dinesh Wadiwel will explore the problem of multispecies governance, and moving beyond anthropocentric visions of law and policy. They will firstly discuss their own trajectories as researchers and the influences that have shaped their work. They will consider fundamental questions around what law is, and how First Nations conceptualisations of law have influenced their work. And finally, reflecting on their projects, they will discuss their own visions for multispecies governance. 

Dinesh Wadiwel is Associate Professor in human rights and socio-legal studies at University of Sydney. He is author of Animals and Capital (Edinburgh UP, 2023), The War against Animals (Brill, 2015) and is co-editor, with Matthew Chrulew of Foucault and Animals (Brill 2016). Dinesh is also a disability rights researcher and was part of a team of researchers who have produced two reports for the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability.  Dinesh is currently developing a book manuscript tentatively titled ‘Animals and the State.’ 

Kimberley Graham is an interdisciplinary scientist interested in less-anthropocentric and collaborative ways to work in partnership with animals and nature. Her legal research is published in Environmental Rights Review, The International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law, The Journal of International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy, and a chapter in Rights of Nature in Europe: Encounters and Visions (Routledge 2024). Kimberley was a member of the research teams who prepared reports on behalf of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to the United Nations (UN) International Law Commission, and the Global Network for Human Rights and the Environment to the Special Rapporteur on Climate Change: both informed the UN General Assembly, and she was an Expert Reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report. Kimberley is also an artist: inviting water bodies as living beings into co-creativity, as featured in Cycles of Hope: Voices of Regeneration and Confluence: Weaving Rivers.