Deborah Madsen, the Principal Investigator of the project, is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the University of Geneva. This project draws on her extensive expertise in intersectional methodology, primarily in the fields of  Indigenous onto-epistemologies, (human) exceptionalism, and eco-feminism. Interviews on the topic of feminism and environmentalism can be found here; recent presentations on such topics as carnophallogocentrism, vegan video games, and the early Transcendentalist vegan community at Fruitlands in Massachusetts, can be accessed via the “Publications” tab.

Ridvan Askin is the Senior SNSF Researcher (CS2) on the project since September 2023, drawing on his expertise in literary ethics, the intersections of literature and philosophy, and nineteenth-century American literature, particularly the Transcendentalists. His article on Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 is available via Open Access. Before joining the project team, Ridvan worked at the Universities of Freiburg, Basel, and Fribourg. 

Aïcha Bouchelaghem is an SNSF-funded researcher (CS1) on the project since 2022; she is also a Research and Teaching Assistant in American Literature at the University of Geneva, where she completed her MA in English Language and Literature and is now pursuing her doctoral thesis. Her research draws on ecofeminist veganism to analyze the rhetoric of re-subjectification in nineteenth-century literary depictions of enslaved women. Her theoretical framework combines nineteenth-century vegan ethics and early American bioethics to connect slavery and animal exploitation in contemporary African American literature.