After her Master’s in Philosophy with a specialisation in environmental philosophy at the University of Amsterdam, Bernice Bovenkerk received her PhD from the University of Melbourne in Australia. At the same time, she worked at Utrecht University where she was lecturing and she specialised further in animal ethics. In 2013, Bovenkerk joined the Philosophy chair group in Wageningen. She has been associate professor since 2019. At the moment, she is conducting research into anthropocene ethics, with a VIDI grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). “I have the same motivation as many students in Wageningen, and that is to make the world a better place. I really love animals and I am interested in their experience. But I’m not one for exact sciences, so I chose not to study biology. With my work, I want to contribute to a more equal relationship between humans and other animals.”
Recently, a pig kidney was temporarily connected to a human, and the first transplants of pig hearts in cardiac patients are on the way. Can we justify keeping animals and genetically modifying them for organ harvesting? For example, donor pigs must live a sterile life and cannot behave naturally. Wageningen…