Annual Scholars

Annual Scholars

1. Britches Scholar of the Year (founded in 2010): ICAS recognizes one graduate student from around the world who is working theoretically and practically on animal rights activism or alternatives to animal studies and research. If you are interested in being an ICAS Britches Scholar of the Year, please send 1) a 750 to 1000-word statement detailing your accomplishments, academic work, advocacy, and academic and political goals; 2) three recommendation letters; and 3) your CV. The position is a one year appointment.
2. Tyke Scholar of the Year (founded in 2010): ICAS recognizes one graduate student from around the world who is working theoretically and practically on alternatives to domestication and colonization of other-than-human animals. If you are interested in being an ICAS Tyke Scholar of the Year, please send 1) a 750 to 1000-word statement detailing your accomplishments, academic work, advocacy, and academic and political goals; 2) three recommendation letters; and 3) your CV. The position is a one year appointment.
3. Hilda Scholar of the Year (founded in 2012): ICAS recognizes one graduate student from around the world who is working theoretically and practically on alternatives to the agricultural industrial complex, slaughterhouses, factory farms, dairy farms, and other exploitative violent agricultural practices used for food, clothes, medicine, and other nonhuman animal based products. If you are interested in being an ICAS Hilda Scholar of the Year, please send 1) a 750 to 1000-word statement on your accomplishments, academic work, advocacy, and academic and political goals; 2) three recommendation letters; and 3) your CV. The position is a one year appointment.
4. Ham Scholar of the Year (founded in 2020): ICAS recognizes one graduate student from around the world who is working theoretically and practically on alternatives to animal experimentation and the medical industrial complex. If you are interested in being an ICAS Ham Scholar of the Year, please send 1) a 750 to 1000-word statement on your accomplishments, academic work, advocacy, and academic and political goals; 2) three recommendation letters; and 3) your CV. The position is a one year appointment.
5. Lennox Scholar of the Year (founded in 2020): ICAS recognizes one graduate student from around the world who is working theoretically and practically on alternatives to breeding, puppy mills, and the pet industrial complex. If you are interested in being an ICAS Ham Scholar of the Year, please send 1) a 750 to 1000-word statement on your accomplishments, academic work, advocacy, and academic and political goals; 2) three recommendation letters; and 3) your CV. The position is a one year appointment.
6. Cecil Scholar of the Year (founded in 2020): ICAS recognizes one graduate student from around the world who is working theoretically and practically on alternatives to corporate hunting, sport game, animal entertainment, and the military industrial complex targeting animals. If you are interested in being an ICAS Ham Scholar of the Year, please send 1) a 750 to 1000 word statement on your accomplishments, academic work, advocacy, and academic and political goals; 2) three recommendation letters; and 3) your CV. The position is a one year appointment.

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• The positions are renewable.
• All scholars must be ICAS members.
• All scholars are responsible for participating in ICAS events and conferences.
• After being notified of being awarded as a Scholar, please send us a 200 to 250 word biography and picture of yourself (photo is optional), which will be posted on the ICAS website.

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2022 Annual Scholars

1. Critical Animal Studies Britches Scholar of the Year
   Nathan Poirier is a doctoral student of sociology at Michigan State University, seeking specializations in Animal Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies. He has previous masters degrees in mathematics and animal studies. Research interests lie predominantly with animal agriculture and veganism, but extend to overlapping oppressions and intersectionality. His current research projects include examining the discourse, comparisons to vegetarianism, and potential cultural implications of in vitro meat; and the construction of animal welfare within animal science courses. In 2015 he organized a community-focused rewilding event in Grand Rapids, MI.
2. Critical Animal Studies Hilda Scholar of the Year
   Mandy Bartram is a graduate student studying Criminal Justice at Ashworth College. Holding additional degrees in Art History and Museum Studies, she has lectured on topics such as, museum theory, exhibition design, and material culture accessibility. Her current research is in Anarchism, total liberation, and late-capitalist criminality.
3. Amanda R. Williams is an independent scholar, author, and Total-Liberation activist. Engaged in the animal rights movement since 2016 and holding degrees in English Literature and Teaching English as a Second Language, they enjoy researching and writing on the interplay of animal-liberation struggles and social justice. As a day job, Amanda manages a database for Austin Pets Alive!, one of the largest No Kill companion-animal rescues in the country. A midwesterner through and through, you can catch them birding in Central Wisconsin or spending time with their partner, Paislee, and their dog, Reese, and two cats, Tycho and Zinn.
4. 
   John Tallent is an activist who founded the social media page Veganarchist Memes: Breaking Leftist Speciesism on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. They hold a BA in Political Science, and are currently working on a Masters in Applied Sociology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Their work tends to focus on dismantling speciesism within the political Left, bringing anarchism into the vegan community, and creating a universally practicable vegan praxis that is anti-ableist and anti-classist.
5. Matilde Nuñez del Prado Alanes is from La Paz, Bolivia. She made her thesis in Sociology on cockfighting, as a result of an undercover investigation in the field for 4 years, and she is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Critical Theory. Her topics of interest are the relationships between humans and other sentient animals from the perspective of Critical Animal Studies, the socio-ecological issues, and the intersectionality between different forms of oppression, domination and exploitation.
6. Maria Crista is an artist based in Timisoara, Romania, working as part of a feminist art group named h.arta. h.arta is a group of three women artists, Maria Crista, Anca Gyemant and Rodica Tache working together as h.arta group since 2001, when they found h.arta space, a not-for-profit space in Timisoara. (h.arta was sometimes a physical space, but many times its projects are taking different formats, such as text based installations, videos or reading performances, changing contexts and locations.) They are interested in topics ranging from knowledge production and (re)writing histories to feminism and anti-speciesism in times of climate emergency. The group is based on their friendship, on an everyday negotiation of the differences between them. They use friendship as a way of learning together how to acknowledge the different nuances of each situation, as a safe space, as a political statement about the power of solidarity. Maria is also a middle school and high school art teacher, trying continuously in her teachings, in her art and in her everyday life to support animal liberation.

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2021 Annual Scholars

1. Nathan Poirier
   Critical Animal Studies Britches Scholar of the Year
   Nathan Poirier is a doctoral student of sociology at Michigan State University, seeking specializations in Animal Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies. He has previous masters degrees in mathematics and animal studies. Research interests lie predominantly with animal agriculture and veganism, but extend to overlapping oppressions and intersectionality. His current research projects include examining the discourse, comparisons to vegetarianism, and potential cultural implications of in vitro meat; and the construction of animal welfare within animal science courses. In 2015 he organized a community-focused rewilding event in Grand Rapids, MI.
2. Annie C. Bernatchez
   Critical Animal Studies Tyke Scholar of the Year
   Annie C. Bernatchez is a doctorate student in sociology at the university of Ottawa, Canada. Her field of interest is in social movement and critical studies, with a focus on animal liberation organizations. It is Annie’s third year in the program and she is currently writing my research proposal. The central point of interest of her thesis will be the everyday lives of animal activists within the current social context of state repression that categorizes such form of activism as terrorism. Annie will hold to a vegan standpoint throughout her thesis to advocate against such categorization. She also will use her position in the university setting to do activist work through speaking and writing.
3. Kiana Avlon
   Critical Animal Studies Lennox Scholar of the Year
   Kiana Avlon is a graduate student in Westminster College’s Master of Arts in Community Leadership program. She has presented research on the rhetoric surrounding houselessness in Salt Lake City and the root causes of speciesism at the Western Social Science Association conference and the Annual North American Conference for Critical Animal Studies. Kiana continues to study rhetoric as it pertains to speciesism with a focus on countering ecofascism within the animal liberation movement. She grounds her research in critical animal studies, anarchism, and ecofeminism with the goal of total liberation. Her free time is dedicated to volunteering at local animal sanctuaries.
4. Jonathan Dickstein
   Critical Animal Studies Ham Scholar of the Year
   Jonathan Dickstein is a scholar-activist from Philadelphia currently completing his PhD in Religious Studies at the University of California-Santa Barbara. He is dedicated to grassroots activism, regularly organizing for local animal liberation efforts and with Food Not Bombs-Isla Vista. Jonathan’s doctoral research focuses on Animals and Religion with an emphasis on animals in South Asian religious cosmologies and ethics. He currently teaches classes on the history of animal oppression in West and the concept of nonviolence in South Asian religious traditions. Jonathan has published on the philosophical and political aspects of vegetarianism and veganism in Philosophy East and West, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Food Ethics, Religions, and several mainstream outlets.
5. Alex Hinchcliffe
   Critical Animal Studies Cecil Scholar of the Year
   Alex Hinchcliffe is a recent graduate in Geography from Sheffield Hallam University, and is interested in animal rights, total liberation, environmentalism and intersectionality. As an activist, he is involved in a variety of issues, from animal rights struggles, climate crisis campaigning to tackling food poverty and homelessness.
6. Daniel Salomon
   Critical Animal Studies Harambe Scholar of the Year
   Daniel Salomon is a first year Master Student in Urban Studies at Portland State University in Portland Oregon. Salomon already has an MA in Theological Research from Andover Newton Theological School with Graduate Certificate in Science and Religion from Boston Theological Institute, as well as a BS Cum Laude from Salisbury University (with concentrations in Biology, Environmental Studies and Conflict Analysis/Dispute Resolution) and a Naturalist Certificate from the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies. Salomon is author of seven books on the environment and a contributor to the eco-ability field.  Salomon lives in Portland Oregon.
7. Brandon Edwards-Schuth
   Critical Animal Studies Topsy Scholar of the Year
   Brandon Edwards-Schuth (he/they) is a Washington State University doctoral candidate in Cultural Studies and Social Thought in Education. Their research interests are green anarchism and social ecology pedagogies, radical democracy, and sound/podcast pedagogy.
8. Alyssa Racco
   Critical Animal Studies Miss Baker Scholar of the Year
   Alyssa Racco is a doctoral candidate in education at York University. She has a master’s degree in education with an accompanying diploma in language and literacy. Her research interests include the education system’s role in furthering speciesist ideals, sociolinguistics, and language acquisition. Her current research intends to explore the anthroparcal messages transmitted to students via mandated curriculum. Alyssa is also a teacher with the YCDSB, TA, RA and Project Manager for a SSHRC Insight Grant.

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