Criminology Professor, Dr. Kelly Struthers Montford, named 2023 Brooks Institute Research Fellow
The Brooks Institute is an animal law think-and-do tank dedicated to advancing animal law academics, scholarship, and policy-making by pursuing a paradigm shift in human responsibility toward, and value of, nonhuman animals. The Institute's Scholars Research Fellowship supports outstanding research that will advance the fields of animal law and policy.
Dr. Kelly Struthers Montford, criminology professor
Dr. Struthers Montford's research examines the intersection of human and animal captivity. Using critical prison and animal studies, her work focuses on practices such as prison-based animal farming, prison zoos, criminalization of animal abuse, and non-prison alternatives for addressing harm to animals.
Her work will concentrate on prison dog K9 training programs. Prison dog programs are defined as those in which dogs are brought to live inside or are boarded inside prisons, and are trained by prisoners to be companions, service dogs for individuals with disabilities, or police, border patrol and/or drug detection dogs.
"This work on prison dogs combines my human rights work with my research on human and animal captivity, with specific attention to companion-based forms of human-animal relations."
Supported by the Scholars Research Fellowship, Dr. Struthers Montford’s project will delve into which prisoners and dogs are considered eligible for redemption, how eligibility is shaped by gendered, racialized, and specied norms and will consider what success in dog programs means.
As a fellow, Dr. Struthers Montford’s research will extend prison animal program research. To date, research has only slightly included prisoner perspectives, and virtually no research on these programs considers canines as independent subjects in their own right. This research will be the first to consider these programs relative to the ongoing realities of settler colonialism and trans-Atlantic slavery that altered Indigenous human-animal relationships in the Americas, and through which the prison continues these projects of racial subjugation.
Read the official announcement and more on the Brooks Institute. (external link)