Kathryn Gillespie PhD  (kathrynagillespie.com) is a writer, multispecies ethnographer, & feminist geographer. She is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Kentucky in the Department of Geography & the Applied Environmental & Sustainability Studies Program. Her research & teaching interests focus on: ethnography & qualitative methods; feminist & multi-species theory & methods; food & agriculture; political economy; critical animal studies; human-environment relations. She is the author of The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. She has also published in numerous scholarly journals & has co-edited three books: Vulnerable Witness: The Politics of Grief in the Field; Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World; and Economies of Death: Economic Logics of Killable Life & Grievable Death. Kathryn has volunteered with Freedom Education Project Puget Sound, Food Empowerment Project and Pigs Peace Sanctuary.
In Sentientist Conversations we talk about the two most important questions: “what’s real?” & “what matters?”
Sentientism is "evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings." The video of our conversation is here on YouTube.
We discuss:
00:00 Welcome
01:15 Kathryn's Intro
- Understanding the harms animals experience under capitalist & settler colonial regimes, particularly in food systems
- "Bringing individual animals into the frame"
- Field work in farms & auction yards "spaces of exploitation"
- Sanctuaries: Seeing the lasting harms of exploitation but also "places to imagine flourishing" & rehabilitation
- Multi-species auto-ethnography. Everyday violence & care
- Living w/chickens "turned us vegan" & lab-rescued beagles
- Academia & activism
07:52 What's Real?
- Raised somewhat in the Episcopal church
- "That just did not resonate with me"
- Visiting Baptist churches "that was incredible... a joyful explosion of faith"
- A Buddhist grandmother & "Living Buddha, Living Christ" by Thich Nhat Hanh
- Practising Tibetan Buddhism as a teenager
- Buddhist compassion & Episcopalian blessing of animals on St. Francis' day
- Supernatural vs. naturalistic Buddhism "The supernatural stuff never appealed to me"
- Envying the pure, comforting faith of a fundamentalist Christian best friend
- Compassion for the other or because god tells you?
- Pagan & Wiccan practics
- People re-connecting with nature during COVID
- The etymology of "real" in Latin/Sanksrit from "wealth"... the capitalisation/commodification of life
- Emotional, embodied, lived experiences re: meaning, connection & knowledge making. Another form of evidence
32:10 What Matters?

...and much more. Full show notes at Sentientism.info.
Sentientism is “Evidence, reason & compassion for all sentient beings.” More at Sentientism.info. Join our "I'm a Sentientist" wall via this simple form.
Everyone, Sentientist or not, is welcome in our groups. The biggest so far is here on FaceBook. Come join us there!
Thanks Graham.