Gauri Kasarla, a 2023 Navab Fellow at Columbia University, interviews 2020 CAF grantee Nathaniel Otjen on his research project and book, “Entangled Lives: Multispecies Selves, Justice, and Narratives.”

The interview examines how primatologists Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas reshaped not only their specific discipline, but ethology, anthropology, and animal studies. They changed how research was conducted, altered the parameters of knowledge, and reduced the distance between researcher and subject. The result laid the groundwork for a radical reconceptualization of animal personhood and ultimately established the possibility of multispecies justice based on a community of subjects. The image below was created by CAF associate Laura Alvear Roa. It depicts (from left to right) Dian Fossey, Jane Goodall, and Birute Galdikas.