Anna Birgitta is a university lecturer in public law at the Åbo Akademi University, Finland.
Anna defended her doctoral thesis in 2011 on the topic “Legislation and Supervision of the Welfare of Farm and Slaughter Animals” that was, at the time, the first of its kind in Finland. In addition to the ordinary animal law and public law courses that she is teaching, she has designed the online AniLex program at the Åbo Akademi Open University. The program consists of nine animal law courses in total. All of the courses are globally available for everyone: https://blogs2.abo.fi/anilex/. She is interested in general animal law as a jurisprudential and educational subject of law. She has a specific interest in fundamental animal rights as a topic of de lege ferenda and about animals and administrative control as it is de lege lata.
Anna has published several articles about animal law issues and the first animal law textbook in Finland, ‘Introduction to the Finnish Animal Protection Legislation’ (in Swedish: Inledning till djurskyddslagstiftningen i Finland). She is co-founder and president of the Finnish Animal Rights Lawyers Society that is, amongst other issues, proposing a Draft on Fundamental Animal Rights for the Finnish Constitution: https://www.elaintenvuoro.fi/english/. Furthermore, she is the founder of the Global Journal of Animal Law: https://ojs.abo.fi/ojs/index.php/gjal/index.
Anna is very grateful to have the opportunity to participate in the MSL Program at the Lewis & Clark Law School, as it gives her an opportunity to deepen her understanding of the legal argumentations and tools used in the common law system and to meet like-minded people. This knowledge will be useful for her teaching and coming writings on the recognition of basic animal rights and the protection of animals. That is, hopefully, for the benefit of both animals and coming generations of lawyers and legal scholars.