Our grantees are busy completing their projects and venturing onto new ones. Here’s a digest of some of their more recent achievements.
Kasia Oleśkiewicz’s Show, Entitled “Animal Gaze,” Opens in Switzerland
Kasia Oleśkiewicz is a Polish visual artist, researcher and animal rights activist who received a CAF grant for her project “Animal Gaze.” Inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida, her art raises questions of non-human personhood to offer reflections on speciesism and captivity. Since receiving the grant, she has also secured additional funding from two organizations in Bern to further her work. Kasia’s exhibition (illustrated) is currently on display at Das Kleine Kunsthaus in Bern, through April 12, 2025.
Suzy González Completes Her “Animation for Liberation” Project
Suzy González is an artist, curator, writer, and zine-ster based in Yanaguana (a.k.a. San Antonio), Texas. She received a grant for “Animations for Liberation,” a series of stop-animation videos that provide visuals to interviews with authors, scholars, and activists, whose work focuses on intersectional veganism. So far, the series includes painted animations of feminist scholar Carol J. Adams, animal rights advocate Lauren Ornelas, and now fellow CAF grantee Julia Feliz. You can watch Suzy’s animation of Julia Feliz, here.
Julia Feliz Launches Community Vegan Outreach Website
Julia Feliz is an author, illustrator, activist, editor, and founder of Sanctuary Publishers, whose work spans across the fields of social justice, queer rights, veganism, disability rights, and anti-racism. She received a CAF grant for “Community Vegan Outreach,” a website and book that aims to provide advice to individuals who are unable to access vegan resources, especially within communities where veganism isn’t yet popular. She now has a website, which is currently welcoming essay contributions for the planned book. Learn more about the project and make submissions here.
Tracy Basile Launches Website called Animal Footnotes: Stories from Turtle Island
Tracy Basile received a grant in 2020 to research the impact of colonization on North America’s animals, notably beavers, birds, buffaloes, wolves, and turtles. Her work emphasizes the absence of these animal histories in modern education, and attempts to bridge these gaps in knowledge by centering Indigenous perspectives. Tracy’s research can be found on her new website, Animal Footnotes: Stories from Turtle Island, where she is now accepting essay contributions.
Matthew Cole and the Ever-Expanding Donald Watson Archive
Matthew Cole is a Lecturer in Sociology at the Open University in the UK, who received a CAF grant with colleague Dr. Kate Stewart to digitize the unpublished archive of Donald Watson, co-founder of The Vegan Society. The growing archive includes letters, photographs, and unpublished writings. In September 2024, Matthew co-presented the project in a talk at The Vegan Society’s research day. He is also working on his PhD thesis, partly based on the archive, documenting the emergence of the vegan movement in 20th-century Britain.
Yuan-Chih Lung and Searching for Animal Utopia
Yuan-Chih Lung (Mona Lung) is a policy researcher at ACTAsia, who received a CAF grant for Animal Peptalk, a podcast aimed at a young Chinese audience, exploring animal advocacy through non-Western, local perspectives. Yuan-Chih’s other notable works include a children’s book about the fur trade and her autobiography, Searching for Animal Utopia, now published in Korean, detailing her journey as an animal advocate. You can read an excerpt in English here.
