I am a first year PhD researcher at Edge Hill University, and part of the Centre for Human Animal Studies (CfHAS). My research is focused on vegan activism and gender. Specifically, I am interested in vegan activist men and how they perform and understand masculinities.

My aim is to approach this by conducting life history interviews with vegan activists who identify as men. Interviews with vegan activists of other genders will also be conducted to help me understand vegan activist culture and levels of inclusivity, with a particular focus on gender dynamics within the UK movement.

I am yet to conduct this research. However, I do have some limited experience conducting interviews with members of Extinction Rebellion, again focused on masculinity, for the completion of my MSc Dissertation at the University of Manchester.

I’m researching the psychology behind speciesism and carnism (both within individuals and within the framework of society) from a trauma-informed perspective. As someone with Complex Trauma and Dissociative Identity, my own therapeutic work has given me a lot of awareness of how early childhood trauma and dissociation interlink with all forms of social oppression, including animal exploitation, and how vegans are treated by society.

I hope that ultimately my work can inspire other vegan activists to use a trauma-informed approach to vegan outreach and animal rights campaigns, but also to self-care (regarding vystopia/vegan’s trauma, compassion fatigue, and personal trauma history).

My approach is integrative, but strongly based on the IFS model, which sees the psyche in terms of personality parts, who are on a spectrum of connection/integration, poor connection resulting in phenomena such as, for example, cognitive dissonance and other paradoxes.