Dr Jeanette Rowley is a consultant leading authority on veganism and law and has led the promotion of the legal rights of vegans for over a decade. She is the founder and chair of The Vegan Society’s International Rights Network (formerly The International Vegan Rights Alliance established in 2012). She manages The Vegan Society’s rights, and advocacy service and recently introduced The Vegan Society’s education function to promote a rights-based approach to much-needed vegan-inclusive education for all pupils.
Jeanette conducted and published a groundbreaking survey in 2013 on vegans’ experiences of equality and in 2014 published Vegan Rights: Questions and Answers. She contributed a chapter in a volume published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016, published Toward a Vegan Jurisprudence: the need for a reorientation of human rights in 2020, and in 2021 published Vegan Freedom of Conscience Around the World with co-Editor Dr Carol Prisco. She has also contributed countless blogs and articles to various organisations.
Over the last decade, Jeanette has held conferences around the world on vegan legal issues and inspired and mentored vegan campaigners and lawyers helping them to consider the use of available legal measures to advance veganism and protect vegans. She has defended the rights of vegans to practice veganism whether at work, school, and college or when in the care or control of other state authorities, and has had a significant impact on equality policy in both the public and private sectors. She has successfully dealt with countless formal grievances, achieved out-of-court settlements, been involved in employment tribunals, provided consultancy to solicitors and barristers as well as intervened in vegan cases at the European Court of Human Rights. She has also engaged with high-profile international initiatives including promoting the rights of vegan children to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Jeanette is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, a member of the Equality and Human Rights Commission Religion and Belief Network. She is an advisor to Vegan Option Canada and an honorary member of The Hungarian Vegan Society.
