Pablo Castello
FellowBiography
Pablo’s work focuses on deconstructing oppressions against minoritized groups, including animals, and on developing proposals to build more just political and legal systems where all animals can flourish.
The deconstructive side of Pablo’s research examines why exposing, or seeing, violence often fails to lead to political transformation, and why biodiversity-based conservation tends to overlook the moral and political significance of individual animals and their social communities. Drawing on political theory, the positive side of his project has explored—both theoretically and empirically, through a multispecies ethnography—how domesticated animals can sustain, what Pablo calls, the “fabric” of democratic communities. It has also studied how to centre the voices of animals so that what they say can be included in decision-making. In conservation, Pablo has proposed measures to better protect wild horses (brumbies) in New South Wales, Australia, and examined the legal mechanisms required to recognize the fundamental legal rights of wild animals under Australian law. Together with peers at PAN, Pablo continues to advance a justice-based ethic and politics for conservation biology.
Pablo’s scholarship has been published in the American Political Science Review, Biological Conservation, and the feminist journal Hypatia, among other peer-reviewed journals. His research has also been featured in public media outlets such as The Conversation and the Australian Broadcast Corporation. Pablo is an Associate Editor of the Political Animals section at the peer-reviewed journal Society & Animals: Journal of Human-Animal Studies.
Pablo has earned multiple scholarships, including research fellowships at the University of Cambridge, Harvard Law School, and the University of Denver, as well as the 2022-2024 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Animal Ethics at Queen’s University. In his spare time, he enjoys taking long walks, hiking with friends, engaging in conversation, and bowling.