Professor Jonathan Birch
Professor Jonathan Birch is a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience at the LSE. In 2021, he led a “Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans” that led to invertebrate animals including octopuses, crabs and lobsters being included in the UK government’s Sentience Bill. In 2024, he published The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. (LinkedIn)
Professor Marleen Onwezen
Professor Marleen Onwezen is Professor of Behavioural Economics in Enduring Sustainable Food Choices at Wageningen University & Research. She is also theme ambassador for consumer science and, as expertise leader, sets the research agenda for consumer behaviour. She leads large-scale projects on consumer choices for sustainable and healthy food, working to explain — and guide — how people choose what they eat, with topics including alternative proteins, emotions, and social norms. Her core drive is to connect science with society and find ways to increase real-world impact. Marleen is also principal investigator at AMS Institute, figurehead of the Dutch National Science Agenda (NWA) route on Competent Consumers, a member of the advisory board of the Food Education Platform, and serves on several advisory committees for the Ministry of Agriculture. (LinkedIn)
Keynote
People say they want to eat less meat — and mostly don’t. They say alternative proteins sound promising — and then buy the schnitzel anyway. This keynote takes that gap seriously as the actual research question. Drawing on behavioural economics and consumer psychology, Marleen Onwezen unpacks why behaviour change toward sustainable and animal-friendly food so rarely turns into lasting habits, and what that means for anyone trying to change the food system. She shows how emotions, social norms, and the invisible design of everyday choices matter as much as price and convenience, and offers a concrete look at interventions that have actually shifted behaviour — plus the harder question of how to make that change stick
One more keynote speaker will be announced soon.
