Alfonso Donoso
Education
Alfonso Donoso is an associate professor at the Institute of Political Science and the Institute of Applied Ethics of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of York, England; an MLitt in Philosophy from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland; and a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from UC.
Research
His general research and teaching areas include environmental justice and ethics, animals and political theory, non-anthropocentric moral and legal rights, and various questions concerning the obligations human beings have toward other animals. He was a Carson Fellow (2021) at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (LMU Munich). He has taught at various universities in Chile, France, England, and Norway, in the areas of political thought, animals and political theory, territorial rights, ethics, and philosophy of criminal law. He has been invited to present his work at seminars and conferences at universities including Edinburgh, Istanbul, Freiburg, Lucerne, Hamburg, LSE, Nottingham, Oslo, Royal Holloway, Stirling, and NYU, among others. His work has been published in journals such as Journal of Social Philosophy, Environmental Values, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, South African Journal of Philosophy, Polar Journal, WIREs Climate Change, and Marine Policy. His book Animal Justice: Confronting Oppression with an Interspecies Politics of Care is forthcoming from Routledge in 2026. He currently serves as Principal Investigator of a FONDECYT project (2026–2029) on the ethical, political, and legal implications of disasters for non-human animals, and leads the Ethical Action and Philosophy of Change and Ecosystems Group of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research. Previously, he served as Principal Investigator on the FONDECYT projects Towards a Theory of Ecological Justice (2016–2019) and A Study of the Liberal Limits of Coercion: The Cases of Penal Justice and Political Self-Determination (2011–2013). He also participated as associate researcher on Political Philosophy Looks to Antarctica (University of Oslo, funded by the Research Council of Norway) and directed the project Ecological Justice? Political Theory, Justice, and Political Representation of Nature, funded by ANID and the Fund for the Development of International Networks. Since 2026, he serves as Associate Editor of Environmental Values and is a regular manuscript reviewer for Environmental Politics, Journal of Applied Philosophy, Journal of Animal Rights Law, and Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics.
Publications
- 2024 – “Intrinsic Value, Sovereignty Rights, and Sentient Animals in Antarctica.” The Polar Journal. Forthcoming.
- 2024 – “Reparations after Species Extinctions: An Account of Reparative Interspecies Justice,” with Anna Wienhues. Journal of Social Philosophy, 1–21.
- 2024 – “Away from an Offshore Aquaculture Industry in the United States,” with Jennifer Jacquet et al. Marine Policy, 160, February: 105986.
- 2023 – “The Ethics of Species Extinctions,” with Anna Wienhues et al. Cambridge Prism Extinction, 1, e23.
- 2023 – “Climate Injustice in a More-Than-Human World.” Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, 36(3).
- 2022 – “Integral Ecology in Laudato Si’: Toward an Ecological Citizenship Education.” In R. Mardones (ed.) Citizenship Education and Catholic Schooling. Ediciones UC, pp. 103–134.
- 2021 – “Towards a New Framework for Rights of the Biotic Community.” In M. Oksanen & D. Corrigan (eds.) Rights of Nature: A Reexamination. Routledge, pp. 140–155.
- 2021 – “Intrinsic Value in Antarctica.” Revista Estudios Hemisféricos y Polares, 12(1): 44–57.
