Department of
Economics

WHALE - Jean Monnet module
Working on non-Human Animals Law and rights in the Eu

The Module (which is an integral part of the hosting higher education institution and is inscribed in the institution’s official academic activities) develops new teaching, pedagogical, research and policy engagement activities on the EU’s approaches to non-human animals law and rights.
The main purposes are:

  • To deepen teaching in European Union studies embodied in an official curriculum of a higher education institution;
  • To provide in-depth teaching on European Union matters for future professionals in fields which are in increasing demand on the labour market.

The Module coordinator is Sara De Vido, Professor of International Law at the Department of Economics, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Goals

promoting the study and dissemination of legal and interdisciplinary discussion on non-human animal law and rights (NHALH) according to an ecocentric perspective

involving operators in the field, jurists and non-jurists, in order to provide them with both practical and theoretical tools to know and deal more consciously with the new regulations that will be adopted

stimulating a general awareness and social education of the issues addressed. Citizens, also as consumers, will be the recipients of practical workshops aimed at raising awareness of the new EU policies, but also at stimulating their practical implementation

fostering fruitful cooperation and partnership between academia, competent authorities and policy-makers by inviting guest lecturers and speakers, organizing seminars and a final conference targeting academics, EU regulatory agencies and competent authorities, national and European level

Educational experience

The course, as well as the supplementary activities, are open to all students, PhD students, research fellows and research associates of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The course, despite having a strong legal approach, with important influences by philosophical, human geography, and economic studies, is of interest for students from different backgrounds.

For example, students in history might find the evolution of the protection of NHALR interesting for their studies and can contribute to the rewriting of the judgment by including stimulating historical perspectives.

Lawyers can take part in single individual activities of the module, or in a “package” of lectures and workshops, and the open virtual lectures are open to students of the non-EU universities that contribute to the organisation: Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo (Japan), Brunel University and the Exeter Centre for Environmental Law (UK).

The final conference and some of the workshops are open to the public and will be live-streamed.  

Teaching activities

The course will be included among the “altre attività formative” (other training activities) which can be accessed by all students enrolled in the university’s courses. Single workshops (the one that do not entail legal analysis of judgments) and the final conference will be open to the public and promoted as such.

For more information, please contact whale.jm@unive.it.

The WHALE Work Package encompasses:

  • Lectures
  • Workshops (also with business activities that endorse innovative approaches)
  • Dissemination Activities
  • Final Conference

WHALE Agenda  

The Work Package is aimed at:

  • Providing participants with the knowledge of the different legal (mainly), philosophical and human geography approaches to the topic of non-human animal law and rights, and to human-animal studies. 
  • Providing participants with the knowledge of EU legislation and policies on animal wellbeing and the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems. 
  • Providing participants with the tools to read and comment on a judgment by the Court of Justice of the EU on the protection of non-human animals and biodiversity. 
  • Critically discussing the impact of choices and lifestyles on the protection of non-human animal wellbeing. 
  • Enhancing participation in the EU legislative process by getting to know the European Citizens’ initiative. 
  • Providing participants with the knowledge of the ongoing reforms at EU level on animal wellbeing. 
  • Providing participants with the knowledge of criminal and civil law in the field of protection of animals, with specific regard to the recent reforms occurred at domestic (mainly Italian and Spanish) level.  
  • Understanding the potential of new learning models which combine lectures, interactive workshops and a rewriting; this is aimed at contributing to the advancement of knowledge of the European policies at issue in order to understand the complexity of the challenges encountered in the area of interest, first and foremost at the regulatory level, but not limited to that, and to understand the added value of interdisciplinarity.

The lectures and the workshops have a unique structure. They consist of a mix of teaching methods and techniques, which will include foundational lectures and in-focus lectures (40h, delivered by Prof. Sara De Vido, WHALE Module coordinator in conjunction with other guest lecturers from other universities, NGOs, supervisors from competent authorities that are members of the teaching staff). Both foundational and in-focus lectures will comprise seminars, pleading or discussion sessions, guided self- and group-study sessions, group work. Such distribution strives to reflect a balanced multidisciplinarity and appears to be intellectually stimulating for the audience. Such set up also reflects the general conception of the Chair and its cross sectional and experimental nature.

WHALE Working Papers
In Partnership with ALI - Animal Law Italia

As part of the assessment method, the course requires students to engage in a research-oriented assignment. This assignment is designed to make students apply the knowledge they gathered. They will be actively rewriting judgements (CJEU or National Courts) according to an eco-centric perspective. The groups will present their work on the rewriting at a workshop dedicated to the students’ works. An assessment will follow. The presentation will be followed by the coordinator and a team composed of one or two professors from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and one member from ALI.  

Final Conference

The one-day conference, open to the public, concludes the module. It will be organised in cooperation with Animal Law Italia [ITA]. As speakers: some of the experts of the module; leading experts at the European and international level; a representative of the EU institutions (from the EPRS [ITA]) to discuss the ongoing trends in Europe; a representative from OIPA [ITA], NGO working on animals’ rights registered among the representative of interests within the EU Commission. 

Dissemination

The area of WHALE Project aims to develop activities that offer a series of outputs by which a wide cross-section of motivated members of civil society can be viably informed of the rich variety of contemporary EU development.

Such activities hence aim to reach out to the relevant stakeholders and disseminate knowledge in the field of Non-Human Animals Rights in the EU.

This will be done by organising activities designed for both civil society and professionals and practitioners.

In terms of dissemination, the project will rely on: 

  1. open virtual seminars and the final conference, as well as the workshops, will be open not only to students and professionals, but to the public as well. Updates concerning workshops will be shared through social media, small videos and extracts from the workshops will be posted on Instagram and Telegram, to engage students and stakeholders; 
  2. short posts to be published at least once per month during the teaching period on ALI’s website. Students will also be encouraged to participate in the drafting of articles and comments for the webpage prepared by the teaching committee, and to propose ideas also once the module is over;
  3. one Special Issue of the ALI Journal on NHALR, which will be peer-reviewed and open access. The Special Issue will feature contributions from scholars involved in the project, as well as other scholars (professors and PhD students) who will send their contributions through a call for papers. The best rewriting by the students will be published, subject to peer review, in the Special Issue; 
  4. a manual for students, which will be published at the end of the project. The selected publisher is Ca’ Foscari Edizioni. The manual will be published either in one of the series already available or in a new series created for the module, which will be open to future publications. The manual will be open access and aims at providing students with legal tools, open to multi and interdisciplinarity on the rights of non-human animals at international, EU and national levels. This will constitute a novelty in the Italian legal scholarships, which does not have, at least so far, a manual designed for students on non-human animal law and rights at the international, EU and national levels.

Team

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Sara De Vido

Sara De Vido

Professor of International Law, WHALE Module coordinator, Department of Economics

Patricio Ignacio Barbirotto

Patricio Ignacio Barbirotto

Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics

Sara Dal Monico

Sara Dal Monico

Research Grant Holder in Law, Market and Person, Department of Economics

Animal Law Italia ETS (ALI)

Monica Gazzola

Monica Gazzola

Maria Cristina Giussani

Maria Cristina Giussani

Alessandro Ricciuti

Alessandro Ricciuti

Silvia Zanini

Silvia Zanini

Whale

Project number: 101127161
Title: WHALE - Working on non-human animal law and rights in the EU
Call: ERASMUS-JMO-2023-HEI-TCH-RSCH