Team

Photo of Liv Baker PhD

Liv Baker

Chair of the Board

Liv Baker is a conservation behaviorist and an expert in wild animal wellbeing.

Her research focuses on individuals; how individuals engage with their environments, and the roles individual, wild animals have in the health of their social groups, cultures, and populations. Dr. Baker’s work explores the similar patterns of wellbeing and behavior seen across the animal kingdom; seeing that individuals want to learn about and hold sway over their lives, that good psychological health corresponds to good physical health, that social context matters, and that positive emotions and reasonable challenges are not luxuries, but integral elements to being alive.…

Photo of Bill Borrie PhD

Bill Borrie

Fellow

Bill Borrie, PhD is a conservation social scientist who is fascinated by human-nature relationships. For many years he has researched the wild, wilderness areas, and the lived human experiences of them.

Bill’s writings have raised issues of technology and wilderness, the ‘disneyfication’ of wilderness, the privatization of nature, the difficult notion of primitiveness, the role of wilderness as a sanctuary, the engendering of wilderness, and on the measurement, monitoring, and management of quality visitor experiences.…

Photo of Adam Cardilini PhD

Adam Cardilini

Fellow

Adam Cardilini is an ecologist and conservation social scientist focussed on properly considering animals in research and society.

Adam is interested in transparently reporting the subjective experiences of animals in science and society, and whether taking an animal perspective can influence our beliefs and behaviours towards animals. He uses systematic review and social science methods to do for animal use in biomedical research, conservation biology, and animal agriculture.…

Photo of Mara-Daria Cojocaru PhD

Mara-Daria Cojocaru

Fellow; Writer in Virtual Residence

Mara is a poet and philosopher from Germany, and is Privatdozentin at the Munich School of Philosophy. At PAN Works she is establishing a new project on “animal-assisted philosophy” – a blend of philosophical and creative writing that is not just about, but with and for other animals.

As a philosopher, she has taught at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, the Munich School of Philosophy and the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, and she has been visiting scholar at the University of Sheffield, the University of Brighton and the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna.…

Photo of Tristan Derham PhD

Tristan Derham

Fellow

Tristan is an environmental philosopher, ethicist, and ecologist based at the University of Tasmania, Hobart.

He is one half of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Biodiversity and Heritage’s (CABAH) public policy engagement team, and teaches regularly into philosophy, nursing, and ecology undergraduate courses. Tristan is also a Project Manager for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, working with WWF-Australia on the ecological and cultural restoration of lungtalanana/Clarke Island, an Aboriginal-owned island close to the Tasmanian mainland.…

Photo of Kim Hightower MS

Kim Hightower

Communications Specialist

Kim is an advocate for humans, nonhumans and the environment, and she joins PAN Works as our Communications Specialist.

She grew up feeling safest in nature and cherished the opportunity in school to read and analyze literature. On a changing planet, she is motivated by a longing to protect the natural world with all of the interconnections it nurtures in the community of life.…

Photo of Fred Koontz PhD

Fred Koontz

Fellow

Fred Koontz, PhD is an ethological zoologist with a long, diverse, wildlife career at the Wildlife Conservation Society, Wildlife Trust (now “EcoHealth Alliance”), Teatown, Woodland Park Zoo, and Washington Fish & Wildlife Commission. Fred has held adjunct appointments at Columbia University, New York University, and University of Washington.

Fred has undertaken projects both in zoos and nature, mostly focused on endangered species.…

Photo of Joann Lindenmayer DVM, MPH

Joann Lindenmayer

Fellow

Joann’s research focuses on the paradigm of One Health with a particularly interest in its ethical underpinnings. She advocates for incorporating One Health and wellbeing into policies and program from global to local levels.

Joann spent seven years living in the regions of Sabah and North Borneo (Malaysia) and the country of Niger working on zoonotic disease.…

Photo of William S. Lynn PhD

William Lynn

Founder and President

Bill specializes in animal and sustainability ethics as they interface with public policy. Exploring why and how we ought to care for people, animals and nature, this is practical research translating insights from his interdisciplinary training in ethics, geography and political theory into public dialogues over moral problems.

Graduating from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with a bachelors in political science and a doctorate in geography, he is a research scientist in the Marsh Institute at Clark University, a research fellow at the social science think-tank Knology, and teaches graduate courses in the Anthrozoology program at Canisius College.…

Photo of Joachim Nieuwland DVM, PhD

Joachim Nieuwland

Fellow

Joachim Nieuwland works as a philosopher on the nature of morality and its implications for how humans relate to other animals.

As assistant professor at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Utrecht University, Joachim teaches veterinary ethics geared at fostering moral resilience and supporting moral decision-making. He is also affiliated with the Centre for Sustainable Animal Stewardship of Utrecht University and Wageningen University, where he researches emotions in morality and what this implies for how humans interact with other living beings.…

Photo of Danielle Raad PhD

Danielle Raad

Fellow; Curator in Virtual Residence

Danielle Raad is an anthropologist, educator, and the Curator and Assistant Director of the Stanford University Archaeology Collections. In this role, she oversees all aspects of SUAC operations, acquisitions, registration, collections management, education, research, and outreach.

Danielle completed a PhD in Anthropology and a Graduate Certificate in Public History from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also a graduate of Lesley University (MEd, Secondary Education), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (SM, Materials Science and Engineering), Harvard University (MA, Chemistry), and Brown University (BSc, Chemistry).…

Photo of Francisco J. Santiago-Ávila MPP/MEM, PhD

Francisco Santiago-Ávila

Clerk of the Board

Fran researches and practices the application of nature ethics to our mixed-community of people, animals and nature, with a focus on the promotion of worldviews rooted in non-anthropocentrism, an ethic of care, and justice.

His quantitative research has focused on the evaluation of the impact of policies and interventions to both conserve and prevent conflicts with large carnivores, specifically with endangered wolves in the US (gray, Mexican, red).…

Photo of Lysanne Snijders PhD

Lysanne Snijders

Fellow

Lysanne is a behavioral ecologist, experienced in the study of personality and social behaviour of wild animals. She is keen to explore how insights from animal behavior can meaningfully inform wildlife conservation.

Her passion for nature led her into her profession as behavioral ecologist and fuels her desire to protect it. Through her work she has realized that nature is not only something we should want to protect but also we should need to protect.…

Photo of Kristin L. Stewart JD, PhD

Kristin Stewart

Treasurer of the Board

Kris explores boundaries and bridges at the intersection of people, animals, and nature, particularly through teaching and writing about animals and spirituality, animal ethics, and animal law and policy.

For Kris, working to better understand people, animals, and nature means taking our interdependence seriously, which is a both-and endeavor. It’s intellectual and emotional; theoretical and practical.…

Photo of Tanja Straka PhD

Tanja Straka

Fellow

Tanja is an urban ecologist and a global expert on bats. Fascinated by the human dimensions of wildlife, she explores human-wildlife relationships and anthropogenic impacts in urban areas.

Tanja studied as a biologist at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and while there developed a fascination with bats. This led to her PhD (2015) at the University of Melbourne, Australia, where she studied urban wetlands in relation to bats and people.…

Photo of Michael Strohbach PhD

Michael Strohbach

Fellow

Michael is a landscape ecologist with an urban focus.

He has expertise in green infrastructure, ecosystem services and urban biodiversity and cultural landscapes. He teaches multivariate-, and geostatistics as well as biodiversity data management at Braunschweig University. Even so, his commitment to PAN Works is not strictly quantitative. He is fascinated by how humans have shaped landscapes, ecosystems and communities in the past, what lessons we can learn from these experiences, and what role humans ought to play in nature.…

Photo of Julie Urbanik PhD

Julie Urbanik

Fellow

Julie Urbanik is a qualitatively trained geographer interested in how place shapes the ethical relations between humans and animals in all their combinations. To this end, she works as a scholar in the field of animal geographies and consults as an expert witness social geographer in criminal defense mitigation. In all her work, she strives to be a facilitator of curiosity and respect in order to promote reflexive understanding.…