Michelle Strauss

Michelle was admitted to the bar in New Zealand in 2007 as a barrister and solicitor and practiced in the area of civil litigation, undertaking both claimant and defendant work. She moved to the UK in 2012 practising predominately in the area of professional negligence.

Michelle became involved in animal and environmental law work in 2015/2016 when she spent two years living in Dublin. During this time she became involved in animal law work, initially through activist work opposing the puppy farm industry in Ireland.
This work brought home to Michelle the significant harmful impacts that intensive animal agriculture has on animals, the environment and people. But more than this, she also became alive to the systemic problems within public bodies that inhibit the proper implementation and enforcement of animal welfare and environmental laws. It was the shortcomings of the legal and governance processes that troubled her most.

When Michelle returned to the UK she founded a charity whose objective is to improve animal welfare by using the law to shine a light on the systemic problems and to seek solutions. She became interested in pursuing a PhD for a few reasons, but the primary one being that she felt she was identifying issues that needed proper research and consideration. Michelle's formal legal training was helpful to a point, but lacked the critical perspective to enable her to step outside of the law and consider the problems from a new angle. Michelle has found the process transformative to her thinking and immensely enjoyable.