Jonathan Birch

Dr Jonathan Birch is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at the LSE and Principal Investigator (PI) on the Foundations of Animal Sentience project. In addition to his interest in animal sentience, cognition and welfare, he also has a longstanding interest in the evolution of altruism and social behaviour. His book on this topic, The Philosophy of Social Evolution, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. In 2014, he was awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize, which recognize “the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising”.

Email: J.Birch2@lse.ac.uk

Simon Brown

Simon Brown is s a postdoctoral researcher on the project 'Foundations of Animal Sentience', where he is primarily working on consciousness in other animals. Originally from the UK, he earned his PhD from Columbia University in the City of New York in 2020 under the supervision of Christopher Peacocke, and then was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Foundations of Mind in the Departments of Philosophy and of Psychology and Brain Sciences at Johns Hopkins University in the USA. His main research interests lie in philosophy of cognitive science and philosophy of mind, focusing on consciousness, memory, intertemporal decision-making, and the representation of time in non-human animals, and he is also interested in the ethical implications of these issues.

Email: simonabbrown@gmail.com

Matilda Gibbons

Matilda Gibbons is a PhD Student in the Bee Sensory and Behavioural Ecology Lab at Queen Mary University of London. She has a BSc in Neuroscience from King’s College London, where she researched chronic pain in mice at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases. For her PhD, she looks at the behavioural and neural indicators of pain in insects. Matilda has tested for behavioural indicators such as motivational trade-offs, wound-tending and pain behaviours in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris). She is also interested in the neural underpinnings of motivational trade-off behaviour and modulation of nociception, and researched this at the Francis Crick Institute in the Neural Circuits and Evolution lab, using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster).

Katariina Hynninen

Katariina Hynninen is a PhD student in the Foundations of Animal Sentience Project, and her background is in philosophy and biology. Katariina did her BA in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki, and wrote her bachelor’s thesis about Descartes’ view of animal sentience and consciousness. She then did a MSc in Aquatic Biology at Hólar University, where she wrote her master’s thesis about the vocalized communication of killer whales. As a part of her master’s degree she also studied animal law at Aarhus University, and environmental law and biodiversity at the University of Akureyri. Katariina is interested in animal communication, language and evolutionary biology, especially in the vocalizing behaviour and communication of killer whales, and what may be inferred from their vocalizations about their sentience, cognitive capacities and emotions, lives and culture. 

Email: m.hynninen@lse.ac.uk

Eva Read

Eva Read is starting her PhD in the Foundations of Animal Sentience project, in which she will primarily focus on the measurement of well-being. Eva has a BSc in Animal Behaviour and Welfare from the University of Plymouth and an MSc in Animal Behaviour at the University of Exeter. She won the Ruth Harrison award from UFAW for her research on hunger in pregnant sows, and has worked in France with project SoundWel, investigating animal emotions through vocalisations. Eva is excited to be part of the ASENT team, as she aims to help facilitate academic agreement and responsible policy regarding animal sentience and welfare.

Email: e.read@lse.ac.uk

Martyna Stachaczyk

Dr Martyna Stachaczyk is a postdoctoral associate working on the interface of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Motivated by the prospect of her work contributing to improving welfare across species, Martyna's scientific interests comprise the biological underpinnings of sentience, cross-species research, and philosophy of artificial intelligence. Before joining LSE, she was an associate editor at Scientific Reports, and a postdoctoral researcher at EPFL, Switzerland, where she investigated neuronal and behavioural markers of uncertainty in animals and humans.

 Daria Zakharova 

Daria Zakharova is a PhD student in the Foundations of Animal Sentience Project. She has an MA in Philosophy from Humboldt University Berlin, with part of her masters spent abroad at King’s College London, where she studied philosophy of biology, scientific epistemology, AI ethics, and philosophy of mind. She obtained a BA degree from the Free University Berlin in Social Anthropology and Philosophy, developing an interest in philosophy of science and epistemology. Her main research interests are in philosophy of cognition, mind and science. Daria's current work is in the area of embedded embodiment in AI and biological cognition, and its implications for both artificial and non-human animal sentience, and conceptions of different kinds of intelligence. She is also interested in explanations of intelligent behaviour in different non-human animals, such as e.g., Portia spiders, theories of consciousness and AI ethics. 

Email: D.Zakharova1@lse.ac.uk

Heather Browning

Dr Heather Browning is a postdoctoral researcher specialising in animal sentience, welfare science, and ethics. She received her PhD from the Australian National University, with a doctoral thesis exploring some philosophical issues in the measurement of animal welfare and sentience more generally. She has also worked as both a zookeeper and animal welfare officer, gaining experience in the use of methods of measuring and enhancing animal welfare in an applied institutional setting.

Heather Browning left the team to take up a lectureship at the University of Southampton.

Sam Gibson

Sam Gibson grew up in Dublin, Ireland. He was awarded a BSc degree in Psychology through Science from Maynooth University, where he worked with Bryan Roche on his implicit bias test, the FAST (Function Acquisition Speed Test). After this Sam went on to earn an MSc in Animal Behaviour from the University of Exeter, during this time he conducted research into memory reconsolidation and flexibility in buff tailed bumblebees under the supervision of Natalie Hempel de Ibarra. Sam has an avid interest in animal emotional welfare and cognition.

Sam Gibson left the team to move to Vancouver, Canada.

Charlotte Lockwood

Charlotte Lockwood is finishing her Masters in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Queen Mary, University of London. Charlotte has a BSc in Biology with Psychology at QMUL. She has some intensive experience with bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) and has worked as a Research Technician in Professor Lars Chittka’s bee Lab. Charlotte is thrilled to join the ASENT team as a Research Assistant, wishing to continue her studies with the aim to become a Behavioural Ecologist.

Charlotte Lockwood is now a research technician at Queen Mary University of London.

Matthias Michel

Matthias Michel is a Postdoctoral Research Assistant at LSE. He completed his PhD in philosophy of science at Sorbonne Université, followed by a postdoctoral research position at the Mind, Brain and Consciousness Center at New York University. He also worked as a postdoctoral researcher in experimental psychology at the Center for Cognition & Neurosciences, at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. His research focuses on the methodological foundations of the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. He currently works on unconscious perception and cognition in human and non-human animal minds.

Matthias Michel left the team to take up a position as Bersoff Faculty Fellow in Philosophy at New York University.

Andrew Crump

Dr Andrew Crump is a postdoctoral biologist fascinated by questions like: Which animals are sentient? Why did sentience evolve? What does sentience mean for welfare? In the lab, he uses bees as a test-case to identify cognitive indicators of animal sentience. Andrew also works part-time as a Lecturer in Animal Cognition and Welfare at the Royal Veterinary College. Before joining the ASENT project, he completed a PhD at Queen’s University Belfast, exploring how human activity affects animal cognition and emotion. 

Dr Crump left the team to take up a role as Lecturer at the Royal Veterinary College. 

Kristin Andrews

Kristin Andrews is York Research Chair in Animal Minds and Professor of Philosophy at York University, and she was elected to the College of the Royal Society of Canada in 2015. Her research is at the intersection of philosophy, social cognition, moral cognition, and animal cognition. She is the author of several books, including most recently How to Study Animal Minds (Cambridge 2020)—an argument for rethinking methods in comparative psychology; and The Animal Mind second edition (Routledge 2020) – a survey of how empirical work on animal minds can help to inform debates in the philosophy of mind.  In recent years, she has contributed to policy discussions of the status of great apes in US law and digital research infrastructure for animal behavior in Canada. Andrews serves on the Board of Directors for The Borneo Orangutan Society Canada, which has the mission to promote conservation of orangutans and their habitat and to educate the public. She is currently writing a book on social norms, animal culture, and the consequences of recognizing other animals as members of communities with their own normative structures.

Eva Jablonka

Eva Jablonka is a professor in the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas, Tel-Aviv, a member of the Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel-Aviv, and a Research Associate in the CPNSS (LSE, London University). She has a M.Sc. in Microbiology and a Ph.D in Genetics. Her main interests are the understanding of evolution, especially evolution that is driven by non-genetic hereditary variations, and the evolution of nervous systems and consciousness. Among her book: Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution (OUP with Marion Lamb), Animal Traditions (CUP with Eytan Avital), Evolution in 4 Dimensions (MIT with Marion Lamb) and The evolution of the Sensitive Soul (MIT with Simona Ginsburg).

Joseph LeDoux

Joseph LeDoux is a University Professor and Henry and Lucy Moses Professor of Science at New York University, where he also directs the Emotional Brain Institute. His work is focused on the brain mechanisms of emotion, memory, and consciousness. LeDoux has received a number of awards for his research, and  is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences USA. He is also the author of several books, including The Emotional Brain, Synaptic Self, Anxious (2016 APA William James Book Award), and The Deep History of Ourselves. He is also the 2023 President-Elect of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. As a sideline, he is the lead singer and songwriter in the rock band, The Amygdaloids, and in the acoustic duo So We Are.

Mads Hansen

Walter Veit

Walter Veit is a cognitive scientist and philosopher with interests stretching widely across science and philosophy. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Paul E. Griffiths (Charles Perkins Centre & Department of Philosophy), Peter Godfrey-Smith (School of History and Philosophy of Science), and externally Marian Stamp Dawkins (University of Oxford, Department of Zoology). His primary research interests are located at the intersection of the biological, social, and mind sciences in addition to empirically informed philosophy and ethics; and his dissertation reflects these interests in trying to develop an evolutionary approach to the science of animal consciousness. Before coming to Sydney, Walter worked at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh as a pre-doctoral fellow on metascience and the science of consciousness. You can find out more about his research here: www.walterveit.com

Fan Yirui

Fan Yirui is a PhD student majoring in philosophy of science and technology from Department of Philosophy, Xiamen University, China. His recent research focused on animal consciousness.

He is funded by the China Scholarship Council to visit CPNSS at LSE and undertake his research project "Animal consciousness and animal protection" under the supervision of Prof. Jonathan Birch. He has translated the entry "animal consciousness"(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) into Chinese, the translation is under final proofreading and will be published on "Mind ＆Language Group" (an influential online platforms in China). 

Anna Lovise Einarsson

Anna Lovise Einarsson was awarded a BSc degree in Psychology from Queen Mary, University of London. Intrigued by the dimensions of animal consciousness she joined the ASENT project, where she worked as a research assistant in Professor Lars Chittka’s Bee Sensory and Behavioural Ecology Lab. For her dissertation she helped conduct research on decisional processes of cognitive monitoring in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris).

Milo Mee

Milo grew up at Dartmoor Zoo, where he was home educated at the Open University. He is currently completing a biology degree and integrated masters at the University of Oxford, and intends to pursue a career in research. He has chosen modules at university to maintain a broad understanding of biology and enjoyed a supplementary course on the history and philosophy of science. He is deeply interested in the work of the ASENT project, and is grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute during a summer internship running an optical illusion experiment on bumblebees.”

Nicky Clayton

Professor Nicky Clayton FRS is the Professor of Comparative Cognition in the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge, UK and a Fellow of Clare college, Cambridge. She is a Visiting Professor at the Nanging University's Institute of Technology (from 2018), Beijing University of Language and Culture (from 2019) and Honorary Professor at Hangzhou Diangi University (from 2019). She is particularly interested in the processes of thinking with and without words, and comparisons between the cognitive abilities of corvids (members of the crow family), cephalopods (e.g. cuttlefish and octopus) and children. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2010. She is also Scientist-in-Residence at Rambert (formerly Ballet Rambert), a position she has held since 2011. In terms of publications, she has an H index of 80.

Simona Ginsburg

Simona Ginsburg (“Moncy”) is a retired associate professor from The open University of Israel, in which she headed the Biological Thought Program in philosophy of biology, theoretical biology and bioethics. She has a B.Sc. in Chemistry (Technion, Israel) and a  D.Phil. in Physiological Sciences (Oxford University). Her past interests were artificial membranes, neurobiology of synapses and the stochastics of ion channels. Her more recent interests are the evolution of early nervous systems and the evolutionary transitions to consciousness in the animal world. Her book The evolution of the Sensitive Soul (MIT, with Eva Jablonka) was published in 2019.

Elli Leadbeater

Elli Leadbeater is a Professor of Ecology and Evolution at Royal Holloway University of London. Her research focuses around the evolution of social insect societies, from both a proximate and an evolutionary perspective, and her primary research models are social bees (Bombus and Apis). Current interests include the evolution of communication in honeybee societies, ecological circumstances that favour the evolution of learning and memory, and insect conservation. Previously, she also worked extensively on insect social cognition, and on the evolution of sociality in primitively eusocial groups.

Alexandra Schnell

Dr Alexandra Schnell is a Research Fellow of Darwin College and a Research Associate in the Comparative Cognition Lab at the University of Cambridge. Her research interests centre around complex learning and memory mechanisms in animals and how these abilities have evolved across diverse taxa. Her primary model species include cephalopods (octopus, cuttlefish, and squid) and corvids (members of the crow family) but she also has experience working with elephants, freshwater fish, and juvenile crocodiles. In addition to her interest in cognitive evolution, she also has an interest in sensory ecology, neuro-ethology, sentience, and welfare. Alex’s background is in marine biology, having gained a B.A. in Marine Science at the University of Sydney in 2007. She completed her Ph.D. on the behavioural ecology of giant cuttlefish at Macquarie University in 2015. Following that, she held several post-doctoral positions and was based at two leading cephalopod research facilities including the Marine Biological Laboratory in Massachusetts, USA and the Centre de Recherches en Environnement Côtier in Normandy, France. Alex currently holds a Newton International Fellowship funded by the Royal Society.