Staff profile

Biography

Naomi is a PhD candidate at Durham University, her alma mater, supported by a Northern Bridge AHRC studentship. She first became interested in law when studying a jurisprudence module during her year abroad at l'Université Sorbonne Paris IV as part of her undergraduate studies in French, Spanish and Italian. Following a Master's degree in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, she began her legal studies in London. In her free time you can probably find her in a park surrounded by squirrels or rehabilitating injured pigeons! She is currenlty a Visiting Scholar in Legal Philosophy at the University for the Creative Arts and a Fellow of the Animals and Biodiveristy Think-Tank at the Global Research Network.

Current Research

Righting Wrongs without Recourse to Animal Rights: Philosophical and Anthropological Foundations for an Alternate Route to Liberation from Captivity

As it stands, captive animals, having been denied the experience of their own milieus, must meet the forever-narrowing boundaries of legal personhood to be included within an existing framework of rights, and, therefore, permitted to live as animals-as constructors of their own lifeworlds rather than forced to adapt to that of humans. Like anti-pigeon spikes, rights are a form of hostile architecture from which the animal warrants protection from rather than inclusion within; a process of cultural niche construction that so impinges on animals' flourishing that they are caught in a double-bind: no longer at home in either nature or the city. The common inability of captive animals to be rewilded and their proposed relocation to sanctuaries in lieu are used by courts as reasons not to free them, claiming it would be an incomplete form of freedom; in other words, they would move from insufficiently oppressed to insufficiently free. 

Ongoing moves to expand the remit of rights to animals fall short by inadequately imagining and capturing the uniqueness of animal experiences. To define 'animalhood', therefore, the concept underlying my legal framework, I draw on philosophical and theoretical perspectives, my primary corpus consisting of texts by Derrida, Stiegler, and Agamben, as well as Itard's enfant sauvage who deftly coinhabits the aforementioned interstice between nature/culture and law/lawlessness.

A cross-reading of historical French texts delineating the human/animal distinction read in turn against my legal corpus, my doctoral project diverges from the dominant juridico-philosophical narrative that views the extension of human rights to animals as the optimal outcome. Rather than seeking to reconcile or emphasize human/animal differences to argue for or against respectively, I focus on the uniqueness of animal experiences, and the the fundamental aporia at the basis of human existence, as the basis for their legislative protection; termed 'animalhood'. Using US habeas corpus cases of zoo elephants as case studies, I develop the concepts of hostility and sanctuary across the disciplines of law, French studies, and philosophy. Drawing inspiration from the emerging dialogue between immigration and animal law, I suggest a framework which focusses on animals' non-comparative animalhood outside of an anthropocentric rights-based rhetoric and grammar, drawing in the irregular immigrant, hostile environment policies, and claims of sanctuary. 

At its core, my project seeks answers to the following questions (and to open ourselves up to even more questions):

- What might an acapitalist, anarcho-communist legal system look like? In other words, a legal system which takes as its base the ability of every being to niche construct rather than the current reality of rights rooted in conceptions of private property ownership and possessive individualism? 

- Can theorising the human/animal divide help overcome the anthropocentrism that pervades legal representations of animals?

- Attempts to extend rights to animals follow several main strands: (1) arguments for the inclusion of animals because they are sufficiently intelligent and/or morally equivalent to humans; (2) claims that personhood has nothing to do with humanness; and (3) alternative taxonomies to personhood that are interstitial and/or comparative (e.g., living property). Viewing these methods as inherently anthropocentric, and therefore problematic, how might we reach a posthumanist definition of 'animalhood'?

- What might we learn from indigenous approaches to human-animal ontologies and their legal regulation if we were to finally view them as legitimate sources of law, knowledge, and inspiration?

- What, indeed, is wrong with animal rights?

- How might we view animals as something other than imperfect humans or victims requiring rescue by way of rights?

As well as Professor Moore, my supervisory team consists of Dr Michael Lewis (Newcastle Philosophy) and Dr Joshua Jowitt (Newcastle Law). 

Conferences/Presentations/Workshops

• Accepted paper at the More-Than-Human Rights Ideas Festival: Interdisciplinary Perspectives for Earthly Flourishing, NYU Law School, New York City, March 2025
• Workshop, 'Being Feral: Rethinking Art and the Anthropocene with Bernard Stiegler' at the University for the Creative Arts and The Global Research Network, UK, January 2025
• Co-organised Workshop 'Rewilding Canterbury: A Workshop for School Children' at the Being Human Festival, November 2025, Canterbury, UK
• Accepted paper, 'Righting Human Wrongs without Recourse to Animal Rights: An Alternative Escape Route for Captive Animals' at the Innovating Towards a Better Legal Framework for Animals Conference, UK Centre for Animal Law, Birmingham City University, May 2024
• Accepted paper, 'What is Nature? Deciphering the Knot of Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Animal Law' at the Life Beyond the Anthropocene: The Human and Ecological Attunement Conference, King's University College at Western University, Ontario, Canada, March 2023
• Accepted paper, 'Searching for Stiegler's "new state of law in the face of automisation": What is wrong with animal rights?' at the Automation and Automatism/s Conference, King's College London, 28th January 2023
• Accepted paper, 'Rights as Hostile Architecture' as part of the 'Animals and the City' strand of the Philosophy of the City Annual Conference in collaboration with the LABONT Centre for Ontology of the University of Turin, October 2022
• Accepted Paper at Hyde Park Session of the Theory of Animal Law Conference, University of Helsinki, July 2022
• Co-organiser and chair, Representing Nonhuman Animals Conference, Durham University, supported by The UK Centre of Animal Law and funded by Durham's Institute of Advanced Study

• Animal Minds
• Critical Animal Law
• Human-Animal Ontologies
• Indigenous Legal Theories
• Evolutionary Theory and Niche Construction
• Anarcho-Communism
• Continental Philosophy
• Philosophy of Technology
• Jurisprudence
• Philosophical Anthropology
• Philosophy of Biology
• Legal Rights Critiques
• Socio-Legal Studies
• Speciesism