Virginie Simoneau-Gilbert

Virginie Simoneau-Gilbert is currently pursuing a DPhil in Philosophy at the University of Oxford with the support of a Rhodes scholarship. Her thesis, initially supervised by Prof Jeff McMahan now supervised by Prof Alison Hills and Prof Dominic Wilkinson, explores moral behaviour in nonhuman animals. Her research interests include animal ethics, practical ethics, and moral theory.

She is also the author or co-author of two books on the history of the animal protection movement: Que veulent les véganes? La cause animale, de Platon au mouvement antispéciste (Fides, 2021), co-written with Alexia Renard and winner of the Prix de l'Animalisme Francophone 2023, and Au nom des animaux : l'histoire de la SPCA de Montréal (1869-2019) (Somme toute, 2019) published for the 150th anniversary of the Montreal SPCA.

She is also an Associate Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and a member of the Observatoire de recherche sur la condition animale (ORCA), affiliated with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in France.