91TV

Research Interests

Environmental philosophy, Philosophy of religion, Phenomenology, Feminist perspectives, Simone Weil

Biography

• B.A., Honours (Philosophy), King’s University College at Western University
• M.A., (Theory and Criticism), Western University

Kate’s research interests include environmental philosophy, philosophy of religion, phenomenology, feminist perspectives, and the work of Simone Weil. She was a visiting graduate student at Cambridge University's Faculty of Divinity during the Lent 2020 term and she attended The School of Criticism and Theory Summer School at Cornell University in 2016. Kate's dissertation entitled Decreation for the Anthropocene places the philosophy of Simone Weil in conversation with our current environmental crisis.

Peer Reviewed Journal Articles

• "Art and the Other: Aesthetic Intersubjectivity in Gadamer and Stein" Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy. 24.1 (2020): 74-91.
• "The Ethical Imperative of Reincarnation in the Timeaus and The Bhagavad Gita" Symposia: The Journal of Religion. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2019.

Book Chapters

• “Enacting Decreation,” in Rethinking Responses to Political Crisis and Collapse: Hannah Arendt, Edith Stein, Rosa Luxemburg, and Simone Weil, ed. Antonio Calcagno, forthcoming.
• "One Hand Clapping" in The Art of Anatheism: The Philosophy of Richard Kearney. Edited by Matthew Clemente and Richard Kearney. London: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017.

Edited Collections

• Breached Horizons: The Philosophy of Jean-Luc Marion. Co-edited with Rachel Bath, Antonio Calcagno, and Steve G. Lofts. Rowman and Littlefield: London, 2017.

Other Writing 

• “The Pandemic of Force.” Review of Apollo’s Arrow: The Profound and Enduring Impact of Coronavirus on the Way we Live, by Nicholas A. Christakis. Attention: The Life and Legacy of Simone Weil. Forthcoming. Online: 
• “Attention in the Time of COVID-19.” Object Tales. Cambridge Faculty of Divinity Online. 2020.

Education

• BA, 91TV
• B Ed., University of Toronto
• MA, Carleton University

Specializations / Research Interests

Animals Politics, Animal Ethics, Political Theory, Feminist Philosophy

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Sue Donaldson followed an unconventional path as teacher, writer and advocate before finding a home in political philosophy. Her research, situated in the ‘political turn’ in animal rights theory, explores the implications of recognizing animals as members of social, cultural, and political communities. What would it mean to live with other animals in relationships of mutual respect and flourishing instead of tyranny and exploitation? Sue’s work centres animals’ rights to collective self-determination, and to co-authorship of their relationships with humans through practices of citizenship, denizenship and treaty diplomacy. This work draws insights from citizenship theory, feminist and decolonial political theory, disability theory, children's rights theory, democratic theory, ethology, and ecological ethics; as well as practical "experiments in living" such as animal sanctuaries and intentional communities.  Sue is the co-author (with Will Kymlicka) of Animals and the Right to Politics (Oxford UP 2025) and Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford UP 2011). She has published more than 40 academic articles, as well as contributing dozens of essays, columns and interviews on animal-related topics for popular media. Sue is co-convenor of the  research group at 91TV’s. APPLE sponsors animal studies talks, workshops, reading groups, public outreach, and the ‘Animal Turn’ podcast.

Books

• Animals and the Right to Politics (Oxford UP 2025). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• Chimpanzee Rights: The Philosopher’s Brief (Routledge 2018) Co-authored with 12 other philosophers.
• Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights (Oxford UP 2011). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka. Winner of the 2013 Canadian Philosophical Association book prize.
• Thread of Deceit (Sumach Press 2004) Short-listed for an Arthur Ellis crime writing award.
• Foods that Don’t Bite Back (Arsenal Pulp Press/Whitecap Books, 2003)

Selected Journal Articles

• “Animal Ghosts at Canadian Universities: The politics of concealment and transparency.” Animals 13(24) 3760 (2023). Co-authored with Laura Janara.
• “Doing Politics with Animals”, Social Research 90/4 (2023). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Realizing Interspecies Democracy: The preconditions for an egalitarian, multispecies world,” A trialogue with Jean-Paul Gagnon and Janneke Vink. Democratic Theory 8/1 (2021).
• “Animal Agora: Animal citizens and the democratic challenge”, Social Theory and Practice 46/4 (2020).
• “Animal Agency in Community: A Political Multispecies Ethnography of VINE Sanctuary”, Politics and Animals 6 (2020). Co-authored with Charlotte Blattner and Ryan Wilcox.
• “Locating Animals in Political Philosophy”, Philosophy Compass 11/1 (2016). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “A Sustainable Campus: The Sydney Declaration on Interspecies Sustainability”, Animal Studies Journal, Vol. 5/1, (2016). Co-authored with 10 colleagues.
• “Farmed Animal Sanctuaries: The Heart of the Movement?” Politics & Animals 1 (2015). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Interspecies Politics: Reply to Hinchcliffe and Ladwig”, Journal of Political Philosophy 23/3 (2015). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Animal Rights, Multiculturalism and the Left”, Journal of Social Philosophy 45/1 (2014). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Unruly Beasts: Animal Citizens and the Threat of Tyranny”, Canadian Journal of Political Science 47/1 (2014). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka
• “Animals and the Frontiers of Citizenship”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 34/2 (2014). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Reply: Animal Citizenship, Liberal Theory and the Historical Moment”, Dialogue 52/4 (2013). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Reply to Svärd, Nurse, and Ryland”, Journal of Animal Ethics 3/2 (2013).
• “A Defense of Animal Citizens and Sovereigns”, Law, Ethics and Philosophy 1/1 (2013). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.

Selected Chapters in Books

• “Solidarity with Animals: The case of domesticated animals” in A. Cochrane and M-D Cojocaru (eds) Solidarity with Animals: Promises, pitfalls and potential. (OUP 2024). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Transformative Animal Protection”, in V. Giroux, A. Pepper and K. Voigt (eds) The Ethics of Animal Shelters. (OUP 2023). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
•  “Animal Labour in a Post-Work Society”, in C.Blattner, K. Coulter and W. Kymlicka (eds) Animal Labour: A new frontier in interspecies justice? (OUP 2019). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
•  “Metics, Members and Citizens”, in Rainer Bauböck (ed) Democratic Inclusion: Rainer Bauböck in Dialogue (Manchester UP 2018). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Rethinking Membership and Participation in an Inclusive Democracy: Cognitive Disability, Children, Animals” in Barbara Arneil and Nancy Hirschmann (eds) Disability and Political Theory (Cambridge UP 2017). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka
• “Born Allies: Children and Animals” in Laura Buzzard et. al (eds) The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose, 3rd Canadian Edition (Broadview Press 2017). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Between Wild and Domesticated”, in Bernice Bovenkerk and Jozef Keulartz (eds) Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans: Blurring boundaries in human-animal relationships (Springer 2016). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Make it So: Envisaging a Zoopolitical Revolution” in Paola Cavalieri (ed) Philosophy and the Politics of Animal Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan 2016). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Animal Rights and Aboriginal Rights”, in Vaughan Black, Peter Sankoff and Katie Sykes (eds), Perspectives on Animals and the Law in Canada (Irwin Law, 2015). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “From Polis to Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights” in Karen Wendling (ed) Ethics in Canada: Ethical, Social and Political Perspectives (OUP 2015). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.

Encyclopedia & Handbook Entries

•  “Sanctuary Communities” in Y. Athanassakis et al (eds) The Plant-based and Vegan Handbook (Springer 2024).
• “Refuge d’animaux”, in Renan Larue (ed.) La pensée végane (PUF 2020).
• “Rights”, in Lori Gruen (ed) Critical Terms in Animal Studies (University of Chicago Press 2018). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Children and Animals” in Routledge Handbook on the Philosophy of Childhood and Children (Routledge 2018). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Inclusive Citizenship beyond the Capacity Contract” in Ayelet Shachar et al. (eds) Oxford Handbook of Citizenship (OUP 2017). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.
• “Animals in Political Theory” in Linda Kalof (ed) The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies (OUP 2017). Co-authored with Will Kymlicka.

Education

• BA, University of Toronto
• PhD, Yale University

Specializations / Research Interests

Early Modern Philosophy, Epistemology, Philosophy of Creativity

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My research spans three areas: (1) the history of early modern philosophy, (2) contemporary epistemology, and (3) the philosophy and cognitive science of creativity. Much of my work in the first two areas focuses on the phenomenon of clarity, or clear perception. This project develops along two parallel tracks.

(1) The first track is historical, as I analyze the role that clarity plays for Descartes and other figures stretching back to the Stoics. This project culminates in a book, Clarity First: Re-envisioning Descartes’s Epistemology (forthcoming 2026, Oxford). I argue that clarity is the central notion in Descartes’s epistemology—and indeed in his philosophy as a whole. On my reading, every epistemic notion Descartes posits is either defined or explained in terms of clarity. Thus I attempt to systematically reinterpret his epistemology by unpacking his views on clarity: what it is, what it does, and how we get it.

(2) The notion of "clear (and distinct) perception" has fallen out of favour in modern philosophy, but in new work I argue that we need to bring it back. I think the right conception of clarity illuminates a wide range of philosophical concerns, including cognitive phenomenology, perception and perceptual bias, reasons for belief (and reasons for doubt), introspection (and its limits), self-knowledge, intuition, inference, and even freedom.

(3) In my third area of research—creativity—I explore questions such as: What is creativity? Can it be explained? Does being creative involve a distinctive kind of agency, or even freedom? My current projects include a monograph called Creative Agency, to be co-authored with Dustin Stokes, under contract with Oxford.

Before joining the faculty at 91TV's in 2018, I was a Bersoff Fellow at New York University and then an Assistant Professor at Barnard College of Columbia University.

Book

• Clarity First: Re-envisioning Descartes’s Epistemology (Forthcoming 2026) Oxford University Press.

Edited Book

• (2014) with Scott Barry Kaufman, Oxford University Press.

Selected Journal Articles

• “Agency and Objectivity: Gomesian Faith, Cartesian Clarity, or both?” (Forthcoming) Canadian Journal of Philosophy.

• (2024) Res Philosophica 101 (3):431–457.

• “” (2023) with Dustin Stokes, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman. URL = 

• “” (2022) British Journal of the History of Philosophy, pp. 1-31.

•  (2020) Philosophers’ Imprint, 20(19), pp. 1-28.

• (2018) Ergo, 5(41), pp. 1083-1129.

• (2014) with Scott Barry Kaufman, Frontiers in Psychology, 5(1145), pp. 1-4.

Selected Book Chapters

• (Forthcoming) in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Imagination and Creativity, edited by Amy Kind and Julia Langkau, Oxford University Press.

• (Forthcoming) in Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition, edited by Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup, and Kurt Sylvan.

• (Forthcoming) in Blackwell Companion to Epistemology, 3rd edition, edited by Jonathan Dancy, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup, and Kurt Sylvan.

• (2018) with Dustin Stokes, in Creativity and Philosophy, edited by Berys Gaut and Matthew Kieran, Routledge, pp. 193-210.

• (2016) with Dustin Stokes, in The Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy, edited by Justin Sytsma and Wesley Buckwalter. West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 318-333.

• (2014) with Scott Barry Kaufman, in The Philosophy of Creativity: New Essays(above), pp. 3-16.

Reviews

• (2014)with John Morrison, Mind v.123, pp. 1187-1191.

Public Philosophy

• (2023), with Dustin Stokes, in Aesthetics for Birds.

• (2021), with Dustin Stokes, in Institute of Arts and Ideas.

Book in progress

• Creative Agency, with Dustin Stokes, under contract with Oxford University Press.