dr. B (Bernice) Bovenkerk

Bernice Bovenkerk is Associate Professor at the Philosophy Group of Wageningen University. Her work explores the ethical aspects of the human-animal relationship, with a particular focus on the use of technologies, such as biotechnology and digital technology. Other interests include non-human animal agency, the moral status of so-called boundary animals, such as fish and insects, the reduction of the consumption of animal source foods, the ethics of sheltering animals from the wild, the representation of animals in the context of climate justice, and deliberative democracy.

In addition to her work at Wageningen University, Bernice Bovenkerk is a member of the Council for Animal Affairs (RDA) and member of the Management Board of the Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies (ESDiT) programme. She is Editor of the Springer series International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics (LEAF), member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Environmental Ethics, and Book Review Editor of Food Ethics. She is vice-president of the European Society for Agricultural and Environmental Ethics (EurSafe). Throughout her career she has worked as advisor for government and policy institutes, for example regarding alternatives to meat, alternatives to animal testing, and the evaluation of the Animal Law. She is project member of a project funded by the Center for Unusual Collaborations (CUCo) regarding more-than-human communities.

In 2025, she was awarded a VICI grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) on a project titled ‘The promise and perils of digital technology for human–animal relationships’. In this research she investigates how digital technologies can be developed in a fair way, taking the interests of both human and non-human animals into account.

In 2018, she received a VIDI grant from the Dutch Research Council on a project titled ‘Anthropocene Ethics: taking animal agency seriously’. This research explored how we can incorporate recent findings about the capability of animals to express their agency into our ethical decisions. As part of this research, she co-edited the Springer volume Animals in Our Midst with Jozef Keulartz.

In 2012, she was awarded an Innovative Research Grant (VENI) by the Dutch Research Council on a project titled ‘The Ethics of Domestication. A new, contextualist, perspective on problems encountered in the human-animal relationship’. This research focused on ethical questions surrounding animal domestication, with a particular focus on pedigree dog breeding and keeping wild animals in zoos. As part of this research she co-edited the Springer volume Animal Ethics in the Age of Humans with Jozef Keulartz.

Bernice Bovenkerk received her PhD from the University of Melbourne, Australia, on a dissertation titled The Biotechnology Debate. Democracy in the face of intractable disagreement, for which she won the bi-annual dissertation prize from the Netherlands Research School of Practical Philosophy. As she highly values societal impact, Bernice Bovenkerk often participates and presents at public events, such as during the IDFA in the Balie, regarding zoos, in the Rode Hoed regarding our responsibilities to animals, and many other locations about topics such as animal agency and human-animal communication. She also gives frequent public talks, such as the Els Borst-lecture about One Health.

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