On January 27 th , Svea Jörgensen gave an interesting talk at the Messerli Research Institute entitled “ Struggling to Balance the Scales: Empirical Insights from the Ethical Review of Animal Research in Sweden .” Svea outlined details of her PhD project, which investigates the ethical review process of applications for animal research in Sweden. There are six regional Animal Ethics Committees (AECs) in Sweden that are tasked with the transparent ethical reviews of animal res

In late November 2025, the 9th Austrian Animal Rights Congress ( Tierrechtskongress ) convened in Vienna, bringing together activists, scholars, and advocates from across the German-speaking world to share their campaigns, strategies, and theoretical reflections. The congress serves as a vital gathering point for those working daily on behalf of animals - offering a view of the broader movement landscape and fostering connections between diverse projects and initiatives. This

Leon Borgdorf at the Messerli Research Institute (Photo Credit: Thomas Kainberger) On December 1st, Leon Borgdorf gave a talk at the Messerli Research Institute on mercy as a fundamental virtue in animal ethics. Leon, a PhD candidate at Utrecht University, works on the ethics of emerging technologies in animal agriculture — especially genome editing — and looks at these issues through the lens of virtue ethics. Instead of focusing only on rules or consequences, virtue ethics

Dr. Judith Benz-Schwarzburg gives a lecture on virtual animals at the Immersium in Vienna (Photo Credit: Oliver Hirtenfelder) On the 8th of October 2025 the Vienna Animal Studies group hosted its largest lecture yet. Held within the impressive in Immersium in Vienna Dr. Judith Benz-Schwarzburg, a Senior Researcher in Animal Ethics and Animal Cognition at the Messerli Research Institute, talked to us about the ethics of digitally representing animals. The event started with a

On the 10th of September, Dr Leonie Bossert started the Vienna Animal Studies (VAS) 2025 Winter Lecture Series by asking whether geoengineering has the potential to help animals or if it just presents another “techno-fix” informed by ideas of human domination.

Carlo Salzani, VAS member and animal ethicist, recently published Animals, Empathy, and Anthropomorphism: The Limits of Imagination. We caught up with him to find out more about this open access book and his motivations for writing it.

Between May 15-16, at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna, an international and interdisciplinary research project named “Contested Moral Framings: Human and Animal Life”, funded by AKTION, hosted a workshop titled “Toward an Understanding of Framing in Animal Ethics.”

On the evening of May 14th, the Vienna Animal Studies (VAS) group hosted a lecture by Dr. Samuel Camenzind of the University of Vienna. His talk, titled “Genetic Pain Surgery with Molecular Scissors,” presented the questions of ethics and science of genetic pain disenhancement in animals.

On the 12th of March 2025 Dr Doris Schneeberger discussed her recently published book Envisioning a Better Future for Nonhuman Animals.

We are now accepting chapter proposals for the edited handbook “Animals in Business Ethics: Managing Multispecies Relations in Organizations