Collegium Helveticum
Switzerland
fellow
Maneesha Deckha
2023-2024
Home institution
University of Victoria, CA
Country of origin (home institution)
Canada
Discipline(s)
Health Sciences; Law
Theme(s)
Health; Labor, Capital & Innovation
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Maneesha Deckha is professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria in Canada. Her research expertise includes critical animal law, vegan ecofeminist theory, and postcolonial theory. She is the director of the Animals & Society Research Initiative at the University of Victoria and serves on advisory bodies relating to sociolegal studies, animal law, and feminist theory, including the Cambridge Centre for Animal Rights Law and Faunalytics. Maneesha is a graduate of McGill University, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, and Columbia Law School.
Her manuscript entitled Animals as Legal Beings: Contesting Anthropocentric Legal Orders was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2021 and her open access documentary series designed for high school and undergraduate screening, A Deeper Kindness: Youth Activism in Animal Law, launched in October 2022. Her current monograph project, supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, examines the lack of government regulation in favor of farmed animals as a rule of law violation and thus a matter of constitutional import.
Research Project
Accelerating Replacement: Toward Animal-Free Human Health Research: A Socio-Legal and Policy Perspective
This project uses critical and socio-legal theories to address the continued ubiquitous use of animals in human-health-related scientific research despite the long-standing global commitment to the 3R model to reduce reliance on animals in human scientific inquiries. This project focuses on the commitment to replace animals in such research and considers howto accelerate replacement results in Switzerland and other jurisdictions.
The first part of the project will consist of the completion of two articles. One will consider the inequities in the global health system and how that reality qualifies and contests the rationale that testing on animals promotes universal human health. This article will explore the partial nature of the type of human that stands to benefit from most animal-reliant health-related research. A second article will consider how to formulate a Swiss-specific pathway for fulfilling the replacement commitment in the 3Rs model, given the legal landscape for animals in Switzerland as well as recent international developments. Furthermore, a symposium is planned, which will spotlight how universities can catalyze a societal transition to divest from animal use in health research.
Research Interests:
animal research; health; 3Rs