Faculty in the Animal Studies Graduate Specialization
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Linda Kalof
Director and Founder
Department: Sociology
E-mail: LKalof@msu.edu |
Linda Kalof is Professor of Sociology, a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and founder of the MSU's interdisciplinary graduate specialization in Animal Studies: Humanities & Social Science Perspectives. Using a visual studies framework, she studies the cultural representations of humans and other animals and the links between culture and nature. She has published more than 30 articles and book chapters and seven books including: Looking at Animals in Human History, A Cultural History of Animals in Antiquity, The Animals Reader, Essentials of Social Research, and a reader in Environmental Values. In addition to serving as a General Editor for the multi-volume Cultural History of Animals, she also edits the forthcoming Cultural History of the Human Body, A Cultural History of Women and the Encyclopedia of Earth’s sections on Animals & Society and Environmental Philosophy. She is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who of American Women and Who’s Who in the World.
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David Favre
Co-Founder
Department: College of Law
E-mail: favre@msu.edu |
David Favre was a practicing attorney in Virginia, prior to joining the Law College faculty in 1976. He has written several articles and books dealing with animal issues including such topics as animal cruelty, wildlife law, the use of animals for scientific research, and international control of animal trade. His books include Animal Law and Dog Behavior, Animal Law: Welfare, Interest, and Rights, and International Trade in Endangered Species. He also has presented to international audiences on these topics. He is a national officer of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and of the ABA Committee on Animal Law. He served as interim dean of the Law College from 1993 to 1996 and from 1999 to 2000. He teaches Property, International Environmental Law, Wildlife Law, and Animal Law.
Dr. Christine Daniels studies the early modern period, with expertise in economics.
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Thomas Dietz
Department: Environmental Science and Policy Program
E-mail: tdietz@msu.edu |
Thomas Dietz is Professor of Sociology and Crop and Soil Sciences, Director of the Environmental Science and Policy Program and Assistant Vice President for Environmental Research at Michigan State University. He has served on numerous U.S. National Research Council committees and has been active in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has won the Sustainability Science Award from the Ecological Society of America. He has worked extensively in areas such as climate change and coupled human and natural systems. That work underpins his interests in animals and society. His research interests include evolutionary perspectives on cultural change and on the relationship between humans and other animal species, the social psychology of animal concern and the political economy of other animals in human society.
Robert K. Hitchcock is Professor of Geography at Michigan State University. His research and development work focuses primarily on indigenous peoples’ rights, political ecology, resettlement, and economic development in southern Africa. His primary foci are on wildlife-related economic activities, including tourism, commercial and subsistence hunting, community based natural resource management, and social and environmental impact assessment. He has done extensive work in remote sensing and mapping and engages in resettlement action planning and assessment of dams, protected areas, agricultural projects, roads, and other physical infrastructure related projects which have social, environmental, and economic impacts.
He has worked in a dozen African countries as well as in Hawaii, California, New Mexico, Nebraska, Guatemala, Peru, and Canada. Some of his recent work is on African and Middle Eastern refugee resettlement in the Great Plains and Great Lakes regions of the U.S. He is a board member of the Kalahari Peoples Fund (KPF), a nonprofit organization devoted to assisting the peoples of southern Africa, a board member of the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), and a member of the Panel of Environment Experts for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, one of Africa’s largest development projects.
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Georgina Montgomery
Department: Lyman Briggs College, History
E-mail: montg165@msu.edu |
Georgina Montgomery received her PhD in the History of Science and Technology from the University of Minnesota in 2005. After teaching for two years at Montana State University, Dr. Montgomery joined Lyman Briggs College (75% appointment) and History (25% appointment) in the fall of 2008. Her research focuses on the history of field science, particularly the development of field methods and sites within primatology and animal behavior studies. Primatology is a transnational science and thus her research also analyzes issues concerning race, gender and globalization. She is an award-winning educator with teaching awards from the University of Minnesota and the Humane Society of the United States. In 2008-2009 she will be teaching LBC 332: Technology and Culture and LBC 133: Introduction to the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. Dr. Montgomery will also teach Hist 110: Animal Histories in the Department of History. Her courses explore fundamental and often controversial topics in science and society and integrate experiential learning whenever possible. In the spring of 2009, for example, her animal histories course will include field trips to animal-related places on and off campus.
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Michael Nelson
Department: Lyman Briggs College, Fisheries & Wildlife, Philosophy
E-mail: mpnelson@msu.edu |
Michael P. Nelson holds a joint appointment as an associate professor of environmental ethics and philosophy in the Lyman Briggs College, the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, and the Department of Philosophy. In addition to many essays and articles, he is the co-author or co-editor of four books in and around the area of environmental philosophy: The Great New Wilderness Debate (1998), The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the Great New Wilderness Debate (2008), and American Indian Environmental Ethics: An Ojibwa Case Study (2004), all with J. Baird Callicott, and For All Time: Our Obligation to the Future, forthcoming with Kathleen Dean Moore. Nelson is also environmental philosopher of the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project, the longest continuous study of a predator-prey relationship in the world and spends part of each summer working with the animal ecologists on the island. He is currently at work on a book focused on the history and philosophical implications of the project. He is the co-creator and co-director of the Conservation Ethics Group, an environmental ethics and problem solving consultancy group. Nelson’s research and teaching focus is environmental ethics and philosophy: from the concept of wilderness to topics in the philosophy of ecology, from hunting ethics to theories of environmental education, from topics in wildlife ecology and conservation biology to questions about science and advocacy. Nelson holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from Lancaster University, England.
Paul Thompson is the author of The Spirit of the Soil: Agriculture and Environmental Ethics; The Ethics of Aid and Trade; Food Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective, and co-editor of The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism. He has served on many national and international committees on agricultural biotechnology and contributed to the National Research Council report The Environmental Effects of Transgenic Plants. He is a Past President of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and the Society for Philosophy and Technology, and is Secretary of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. He has continuing interests in environmental and agricultural ethics.
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Laurie Thorp
Department: CARRS and Director of the RISE Program
E-mail: thorpl@msu.edu |
Laurie Thorp's most recent efforts have focused on getting pigs out of concrete confinement to live on MSU pasture at the Student Organic Farm.
