Joe Hardwick

I am an historian, employed at Northumbria University, with a special interest in the disappearance and reappearance of the non-human animal in the modern Church of England; in these respects my research connects to the philosophical writings and personal history of Mary Midgley.

I’m interested in moments when animals forced their way into the Church, made trouble for Anglicans, disrupted conventional practices, and demanded a place in what Midgley once called the ‘mixed community’. So I'm drawn to moments since the later nineteenth century when this Anglican community widened to include farmed and domestic animals: this might be because unexpected events, such as disease and suffering, forced animals onto the Anglican agenda, or because modern developments, notably the coming of factory farming, forced the Church to reassess some of its assumptions about community, welfare, and rights and responsibilities.