1st prize: Valéry Giroux, Centre for Research on Ethics – Université de Montréal
Valéry Giroux holds a master of laws and is a member of the Barreau du Québec. Her thesis focused on a project to reform the animal cruelty offences in the Canadian Criminal Code. She also completed post-graduate studies in philosophy at Université de Montréal. Her doctoral thesis on the extension of basic individual rights to all sensitive beings was recently published as Contre l’exploitation animale by Éditions L’Âge d’Homme. Since 2013, she has worked as the coordinator of the Centre de recherche en éthique (CRÉ), an interuniversity centre based in Québec, at which she is pursuing animal ethics research in addition to her administrative duties.
Valéry is a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law at Université de Montréal. She has taught several courses and supervised graduate and post-graduate students. She has lectured extensively on our moral obligations and duty of justice toward other animals, made numerous media appearances and published a number of academic papers and articles for general audiences on these issues. She is the coauthor of Le Véganisme, published in fall 2017 in the Que sais-je ? collection (Puf) and has undertaken a second book on speciesism.