We are thrilled to announce the third installment of the Global Course on More-Than-Human Rights, which will take place in London (United Kingdom) from July 20th – July 25th, 2026 on the NYU London campus.
We are thrilled to announce the third installment of the Global Course on More-Than-Human Rights, which will take place in London (United Kingdom) from July 20th – July 25th, 2026 on the NYU London campus.
More-than-human (MOTH) rights is a quickly evolving field, one that draws on perspectives, insights, and ideas from law, science, Indigenous knowledge, philosophy, and the arts to advance legal actions, strategies, and research to protect the diversity, richness, and well-being of the more-than-human world.
The Global Course on More-Than-Human Rights is an intensive five-day course designed to impart students with the essential elements of rights of nature / more-than-human rights law and contemporary practices and thinking associated with the MOTH paradigm.
With classes and immersive learning modules taught by world-renowned experts in rights of nature law and jurisprudence, multispecies justice philosophy, biology, Indigenous storytelling, writing, and more, students walk away with a firm understanding of the rights of nature / more-than-human rights field. In particular, the course modules are structured around the conceptual, theoretical, and practical foundations of the MOTH field.
Key Topics
Who has a voice: who counts as a legal subject for the law? Who is included in the circle of moral concern?
How do we listen: how do we listen to the voices of the more-than-human world? How do we enter into dialogue with these voices, and what implications does it have for how we understand law, governance, and participation?
How do we act: how do we act on and with the voices of the more-than-human world?
How do we think: what are the knowledges and disciplines that should participate in conversations and actions to protect the more-than-human world?
Learning Objectives
Students will conclude the Course with:
A clearer understanding of how to move beyond anthropocentrism in legal actions and legal practice.
A firm grasp of the state of the rights of nature / more-than-human rights field.
An enhanced comprehension of the interdisciplinary and intercultural elements of the MOTH field.
An improved ability to reimagine the actions and tools needed to protect the human and more-than-human world.
2026 Course Instructors include
César Rodríguez Garavito
César Rodríguez-Garavito is the founding director of the More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Project and the Earth Rights Advocacy Program at NYU School of Law. He is a Professor of Clinical Law and Chair of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law. César is a human rights and environmental justice scholar and practitioner whose work and publications focus on climate change, Indigenous peoples’ rights, and the human rights movement.
Carlos Andrés Baquero Díaz
Carlos Andrés Baquero-Díaz is the Research Director at the NYU Earth Rights Research and Action (TERRA) Program, which is the umbrella organization for the MOTH Program. He graduated from the JSD program at NYU Law, where he worked on the intersection between property rights and environmental protection in tropical forests.
Jacqueline Gallant
Jackie Gallant is a lawyer and the Director of Programs at the NYU More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Program, where she works on legal actions, research, and education to advance rights and well-being for humans, nonhumans, and the web of life that sustains us all. Jackie holds a JD (cum laude) from NYU School of Law and a BA (magna cum laude) from Brown University.
Yuvan Aves
Yuvan Aves is an educator, writer, naturalist, and activist based in Chennai, India. He writes at the intersection of ecology, education, and human consciousness. He is the author of two books: Intertidal: The Hidden World Between Land and Sea and Intertidal: A Coast and Marsh Diary. Yuvan is also the recipient of the M.Krishnan Memorial Nature Writing Award.
Yadvinder Malhi
Yadvinder Malhi is an ecosystem scientist who explores the functioning of the biosphere and its interactions with global change, including climate change. He has a particular fascination with and love for tropical forests and also in nature recovery worldwide.
Yadvinder leads the Ecosystems Programme of the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University, which encompasses a broad spectrum of research on ecosystems ranging from the natural sciences through to social sciences, policy and governance. Finally, he’s the President of the British Ecological Society, a Trustee of the London Natural History Museum, and a Fellow of the Royal Society
Alessandro Pelizzon
Alessandro Pelizzon is Associate Professor at University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. He completed his LLB/LLM at the University of Turin in Italy, specializing in comparative law and legal anthropology with a field research project conducted in the Andes. His Doctoral research, conducted at the University of Wollongong, focused on native title and legal pluralism in the Illawarra region. Alessandro has been exploring the emerging discourse on rights of nature, Wild Law, and Earth Jurisprudence since its inception, with a particular focus on the intersection between this emerging discourse and different legal ontologies. His most recent book, titled Ecological Jurisprudence: Law, Representation and Environmental Metaphysics, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2025.
Alessandro is a co-founder and an Executive Committee Member of the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature, the current Director of GARN’s International Academic Hub, and an expert member of the UN Harmony with Nature programme.
Alessandro’s main areas of research are legal anthropology, legal theory, comparative law, ecological jurisprudence, sovereignty, and Indigenous rights.
Christine Webb
Christine Webb is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University, where she is part of the Animal Studies program. She is the author of The Arrogant Ape: The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters.
Her research is driven by growing awareness that the ecological crisis demands a profound shift in how we understand other animals and our place among them, leading to two intersecting lines of inquiry.
First, her work seeks to elucidate the complex dynamics of animal social life, and to apply this knowledge to foundational questions in animal ethics and conservation. Specifically, Christine investigates how animals manage and mitigate social disruptions, the emotional and motivational states that underlie those processes, and the cultural influences shaping them, with a focus on nonhuman primates.
Second, Christine is interested in how prevailing societal norms, values, and institutions shape contemporary scientific knowledge of other animals and the environment more generally. In particular, her recent work engages critically with human exceptionalism, and how this pervasive ideology—oftentimes hidden—biases scientific exploration of the more-than-human world.
Past Course Instructors
Agustín Grijalva Jiménez
Agustín Grijalva Jiménez is a former justice of the Constitutional Court of Ecuador and a Professor of Law at the Universidad Andina, focusing on constitutional interpretation. Since 2011, he has been a Member of the Higher Education Council of Ecuador (CES), elected by merit and competitive examination.
Natalia Greene
Natalia is an Ecuadorian activist and political scientist. Bachelor of Arts at Hampshire College, Massachusetts. Master’s degree in Social Sciences from FLACSO-Ecuador, Master’s degree in Climate Change and Sustainable Development from UASB-EC. She promoted the recognition of Rights for Nature in Ecuador’s Constitution and has worked on the environmental and indigenous aspects of the Yasuní-ITT Initiative to keep oil underground in the Amazon.
Danielle Celermajer
Professor Danielle Celermajer is Deputy Director of the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney and leads the Multispecies Justice project. She lives on an intentional Multispecies community on Dharawal county in South East Australia, and through the experience of living through the black summer bushfires with this community, she began writing about a new crime of our age, Omnicide, and subsequently Summertime: Reflections on a Vanishing Future.
David Gruber
David Gruber is the Founder & President of Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), a nonprofit, interdisciplinary scientific and conservation initiative on a mission to listen to and translate the communication of sperm whales. He is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Environmental Sciences at the City University of New York, Baruch College & The CUNY Graduate Center. His interdisciplinary research bridges animal communication, climate science, marine biology, microbiology, molecular biology and his inventions include technology to perceive the underwater world (“shark-eye camera”) from the perspective of marine animals.
Merlin Sheldrake
Merlin is a biologist and author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and winner of the Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize. Merlin is a research associate of the Vrije University Amsterdam and works with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks and the Fungi Foundation. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms. (merlinsheldrake.com)
Teresa Vicente
Teresa Vicente is a professor of philosophy of law at the University of Murcia (Spain) who has dedicated her professional life to ecological justice and the rights of nature. Teresa led the campaign for recognition of legal personhood for Mar Menor, which was affirmed in a recent ruling by the Constitutional Court of Spain. For this, she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize.
Cormac Cullinan
Cormac Cullinan is a lawyer with strong creative, communication, writing, and leadership skills, and a reputation for innovation and “thinking outside the box”. He is the Director of Cullinan & Associates, where he represents a diverse range of clients that include international organisations, governments, businesses (e.g. in the renewable energy, waste, manufacturing and hospitality sectors), cities, non-governmental organisations and local communities.
Elizabeth Macpherson
Elizabeth Macpherson is a lawyer, Professor of Law, and Rutherford Discovery Fellow at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. She specializes in natural resources law and Indigenous and human rights, with a particular interest in the protection of environmental and Indigenous values in the management of water. Elizabeth is the author of Indigenous Water Rights in Law and Regulation: Lessons from Comparative Experience (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and a number of journal articles on the Indigenous and environmental rights, the rights of nature and legal rights for rivers in coparative law.
Rebecca Lewin
Rebecca Lewin is a curator and writer focusing on the intersections of contemporary art, design, and ecology. She is currently Senior Curator at the Design Museum, where she is developing the forthcoming exhibition ‘More than Human.’ She was previously Curator of Exhibitions and Design at the Serpentine Galleries, where she delivered exhibitions, Pavilions, publications, and live events.
Patricia Gualinga
Patricia Gualinga is a human rights and land rights defender from the Kichwa people of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Throughout her life, Patricia has dedicated herself to protecting her community from human rights violations caused primarily by oil exploration and militarization.
Jonathan Watts
Jonathan Watts is an author and journalist based in the Amazon rainforest. He is global environment editor for The Guardian and founder of the Rainforest Journalism Fund and Sumaúma.com.
A veteran foreign correspondent previously based in Tokyo, Beijing, and Rio de Janeiro, Jonathan covered two tsunamis, three earthquakes, one cyclone, two bombings, a G8 conference, two world cups, and three Olympics and interviewed numerous state leaders. He switched to full time environmental reporting while writing the eco-travelogue, When a Billion Chinese Jump. He more recently wrote a biography of the brilliant natural scientist who conceived the Gaia Theory of the Earth as a living organism: The Many Lives of James Lovelock.
Robert Macfarlane
Robert Macfarlane is the author of books about people, place and nature including Underland, The Old Ways, Landmarks and The Wild Places, as well as — with Jackie Morris — The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. He has written films including River (2022) and Mountain (2017), both starring Willem Dafoe, and collaborated with musicians including Johnny Flynn, Cosmo Sheldrake and Julie Fowlis. His work has been translated into many languages and widely adapted for stage, film, television, music and radio. He is Professor of Literature and the Environmental Humanities in Cambridge, and his current book-in-progress is called Is A River Alive?, and concerns the lives and deaths of rivers and the global Rights of Nature movement.
Apply
To apply to the 2026 Global Course on More-Than-Human Rights, please submit your application through the following form. The deadline to submit your application isApril 1, 2026.
