LEAP Invites Applications for 2022 Student Grant Program

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The Law, Ethics & Animals Program (LEAP) at Yale Law School is inviting applications for the LEAP Student Grant Program. The grant program supports Yale student-led research and creative projects that advance understanding of, draw attention to, or develop strategies to address the urgent threats facing non-human animals. All current Yale students can submit proposals for term time and summer projects. 

The inaugural 2021 LEAP Student Grant Program funded an expansive range of projects. Last year’s grantees have used their awards to advance research, scholarship, art, and journalism across the country and internationally, focused on advancing a more humane and sustainable world. Some examples of last year’s projects: 

  • AZ Arietta, a Ph.D. candidate at Yale, and Bayla Arietta are curating an art exhibit highlighting avian window strike fatalities and the threat they pose to bird populations. Scientists estimate that window strikes kill up to 1 billion birds in the United States annually. More than artists are creating work for the exhibition, which is slated to open in summer 2022.
  • Grace Cajski YC ’24 researched the resurgence of traditional Hawaiian aquaculture techniques. A cohort of Hawaiians has returned to the practice of growing limu, a type of Hawaiian seaweed. Cajski’s work on this new generation of aquaculturists has already appeared in publications like ECO Magazine. You can read a Q&A with Cajski about her work. 
  • Kristy Ferraro and Nathalie Sommer, Ph.D. candidates at Yale, and Anthony Ferraro YC ’12 wrote two scholarly articles about ethics, ecology, and the role of philosophy in conservation. Their first piece, “Challenges Facing Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration in Conservation Ethics,” was published in Conservation Science and Practice in August and assesses the state of the dialogue between ethicists and conservation practitioners. Their second paper, “An Interest-Based Rights Ethic for Wildlife Management and Applications To Behavioral Training,”  was published in the same journal in December. 
  • Ram Vishwanathan YC ’22, examined the intersection of animal rights and Hindu nationalism in contemporary Indian politics. Vishwanathan traveled to various Hindu and Dalit centers in the United States to examine how the Hindutva cause inflicts animal protection rhetoric in the Indian diaspora.
  • AJ Hudson YLS ’23 is writing a legal article arguing for a new understanding of the rights of nature. He is examining how new legal and constitutional protections for nature Bolivia and Ecuador are connected to the old European and North American practice of trying animals for crimes. 
  • Sandra Amezcua Rocha YC ’23 created a guide to the fauna of the Lake Patzcuaro region in Michoacán, Mexico, through interviews with the indigenous P'urhépecha community. A P'urhépecha-language version of the guide is forthcoming.

The deadline for submitting a proposal is March 31, 2022. Interested students can find more detailed grant information and application instructions on LEAP’s website. For questions, please contact Noah Macey