Susana Monsó was born in Madrid in 1988. She holds a BA in Philosophy from Complutense University of Madrid, an MA in Global Ethics and Human Values from King’s College London, and a PhD in Philosophy from UNED, Spain. She has been a post-doc fellow at the University of Graz and is now based at the Unit of Ethics and Human-Animal Studies of the Messerli Research Institute.
Monsó is interested in the philosophical investigation of the continuities between the minds of humans and other animals, as well as in exploring the ethical implications of new discoveries in comparative cognition. She is part of the FWF-funded research project 'Morality in Animals: What It Means and Why It Matters' (PI: Judith Benz-Schwarzburg) and leads her own Lise Meitner project on 'Animals and the Concept of Death.'

Link to personal website ¹

Research interests

• Animal cognition and behaviour
• Moral psychology
• Normative animal ethics
• Applied animal ethics

Current research projects

• Morality in Animals: What It Means and Why It Matters (FWF Project P31466-G32; PI: Judith Benz-Schwarzburg) ²
• Animals and the Concept of Death (Lise Meitner Project M2518-G32; PI: Susana Monsó) ³

Selected publications

• Monsó, S. & Wrage, B. (2021): 'Tactful animals: How the study of touch can inform the animal morality debate.' ⁴ Philosophical Psychology, 34 (1), 1-27.
• Monsó, S. & Osuna-Mascaró, A.J. (2020): 'Death is common, so is understanding it: The concept of death in other species.' ⁵ Synthese. DOI: 10.1007/s11229-020-02882-y
• Monsó, S. (2019): 'How to tell if animals can understand death.' ⁶ Erkenntnis. DOI: 10.1007/s10670-019-00187-2
• Monsó, S. & Andrews, K. (Forthcoming): 'Animal moral psychologies' ⁷ in Doris, J. & Vargas, M. (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Monsó, S., Benz-Schwarzburg, J., & Bremhorst, A. (2018): ‘Animal morality: What it means and why it matters.’ ⁸ The Journal of Ethics, 22 (3–4), 283–310.
• Monsó, S. (2017): ‘Morality without mindreading.’ ⁹ Mind & Language, 32 (3), 338–57.
• Rowlands, M. & Monsó, S. (2017): ‘Animals as reflexive thinkers: the aponoian paradigm’ ¹⁰ in Kalof, L. (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, pp: 319-343. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Monsó, S. (2015): ‘Empathy and morality in behaviour readers.’ ¹¹ Biology & Philosophy, 30 (5), 671-690.

For a full list of publications, please click here ¹².

Teaching at the Messerli

WS 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020:

• Practical Course on Ethics and Human-Animal Studies (IMHAI)

SS 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021:

• Current Debates in Applied Animal Ethics (IMHAI)
• Philosophy Journal Club (IMHAI)