About the Series Editors

Kate Stewart is Professor of Sociology at the University of East Anglia, where she is also Undergraduate Course Director for the Sociology programmes, and Deputy Head of the School of Social Work. Previously, she was the Principal Lecturer in Sociology at Nottingham Trent University, having also held academic posts at the University of Nottingham, the University of Bristol and Cardiff University. She has been teaching sociology at UK Higher Education institutions for over 25 years, and her research and teaching has focussed on areas including research methods, medical sociology, the sociology of food, and the sociological study of veganism and animal use. Kate is one of the UK’s foremost academics in the sociological study of veganism and human-animal relations, in particular looking at representations of nonhuman animals in popular media. Her current work focusses on the intersection of gender and species in cultural representations. She has been publishing in this field for over 15 years, including the ground-breaking 2014 book ‘Our Children and Other Animals’, co-authored with Dr Matthew Melsa (formerly Cole) of the Open University. She is part of the research team studying the archive of personal papers of Donald Watson, one of the founders of the UK Vegan Society.

Matthew Melsa is Senior Lecturer in Criminology in the Social Policy & Criminology (SPC) department at The Open University. Matthew’s research has been foundational to the emerging fields of Vegan Sociology, Vegan Criminology and multidisciplinary Vegan Studies. Research interests include: cultural representations of vegans and veganism; the genealogy of modern veganism; human-nonhuman animal relations in terms of social harm, especially as reproduced and legitimated through childhood socialization, cultural reproduction and intersections between intra-human and inter-species oppression (for example, affinities and entanglements between sexism, racism and speciesism). Matthew leads the research team studying the archive of personal papers of Donald Watson, one of the founders of the UK Vegan Society. In recent work he has co-developed principles of an intersectional Vegan Standpoint Methodology (with Kate Stewart), an epistemological, methodological and ethical innovation that can ground research across Vegan Studies for years to come.

Emerald Commissioning Editor

Katy Mathers is Senior Books Commissioning Editor for Sociology and Criminology at Emerald. Within her career in academic publishing, Katy is committed to identifying and commissioning emerging sub-disciplines. She supports this series as a home for the growth of this burgeoning, vibrant and emerging field both as a dedicated Commissioning Editor interested in emerging sociological fields, and as a committed and passionate vegan.