Find our Sentientism conversation (with Heather Marshall) on the Sentientism YouTube here and the Sentientism Podcast here.

Michelle is the founder and director of VinE (Veganism in Education). VinE aims, through education, to encourage the development of empathy, critical thinking and ethical decision making. She has background in law, having worked as a Crown Prosecutor, a Magistrate and as guest lecturer on English Law at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow.

Michelle’s interest in humane education was sparked by a vegan parent seeking advice in challenging the raising of pigs for food at his daughter’s school.  Michelle was intrigued to learn that school farms in the UK actively involved children in caring for animals for slaughter. She questioned the educational merit of this practice as it appeared to go against children’s natural empathy for animals. Michelle looked at how animals were considered across the curriculum, and found there were limited opportunities for children to critically think about the way we define and inter-relate with them. Whilst compassion for domestic pets appeared to be encouraged, empathy towards other animals, especially ‘food animals’ was not.  She felt the promotion of animals as chiefly ‘products’ seriously undermined the teaching of empathy. Her research culminated in a paper on humane education, which she presented as an independent scholar at the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Meeting with leading academics and teaching professionals, she found a consensus of opinion supporting the need for a paradigm shift in the way we teach children to view animals and our relationships with them. This shift would contribute to children’s emotional, cognitive and social development whilst bringing hope for a more empathic, just and sustainable planet.  She says, “these benefits, so passionately endorsed by educators and professionals working across the academic disciplines, inspired me to create the VinE initiative.”

Michelle has a broadly naturalistic epistemology which leaves space for something transcendent that connects us all. She is vegan and has, at least, a sentiocentric moral scope.

VinE (Veganism in Education)
VinE on Insta
Michelle on LinkedIn