Launch of the Journal of Animal Ethics

This month, April the University of Illinois Press publishes a new Journal of Animal Ethics (JAE), which will come out twice a year, and represents years of collaboration between the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and the University Press with the goal of widening international debate about the moral status of animals. This is the first academic journal in the world to include the phrase 'animal ethics' in its title.

The editors are the Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics, and Professor Priscilla Cohn, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University and Associate Director of the Centre.

The publication gives an outlet to academics to publish on matters of animal ethics. As such it is multidisciplinary, including anthropology, ethics, history, law, literature, linguistics, political theory, religion and science, being progressive in thought about animals and international in scope. It also relates to those working in animal protection. It will therefore be both theoretical and practical. This means full-length scholarly articles and argument pieces usually related to current affairs, with responses, reviews, research reports, review articles and book reviews.

In the first issue there are articles on Canada's commercial seal hunt, animal suffering being unrecognised in research, questioning the use of animals in spinal cord research, examining cognitive abilities of animals (asking how long they can be denied similar rights to humans), the issue of classifying animals as 'pets or meat', looking at friendship as the basis for animal ethics and debating whether Whiteheadians (followers of the ideas of Alfred North Whitehead) should be vegetarians.

There is a Facebook page. Subscription is at the Journal's website. Contributions to the Journal are welcomed with submission guidelines at the JAE's website.

There is press information from Sam Calvert, Samantha Calvert Marketing & PR, sam@samcalvert.plus.com / +44 (0)1782 505430 / +44 (0)7967 042050 or Jeff McArdle, Associate Journals Manager at the University of Illinois Press, jmcardle@uillinois.edu on + 1 -217-244-0381.

Some books by Andew Linzey are (andrewlinzey@aol.com, andrew.linzey@theology.ox.ac.uk or director@oxfordanimalethics.com) Animal Theology (SCM Press/ University of Illinois Press, 1994), Animal Rites (SCM Press/The Pilgrim Press, 1999), Creatures of the Same God (Winchester University Press, 2007) and Why Animal Suffering Matters (Oxford University Press, 2009). Books by Priscilla N. Cohn include Contraception in Wildlife, Book 1 (Edwin Mellen Press, 1996) and Ethics and Wildlife (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999). .