Brief reflections on my PhD research

Recently, I had the opportunity to share some reflections on my PhD research for Post Print, the newsletter of Romance, Revolution and Reform. I’ve been a proud member of the postgraduate-led journal’s editorial board since March 2023, and as my term draws to a close, I was delighted to contribute to the newsletter’s new series, 'Researcher Insights'. It was a pleasure to reflect on my work in this setting, and an even greater pleasure to collaborate with my fellow editors on the past few issues of the journal.

Please consider supporting RRR by reading and sharing the journal, following along on Bluesky, and engaging with upcoming events—or by submitting your own work. The original newsletter, where these brief reflections first appeared, can be found here.

"Saint Jerome in His Study" by Albrecht Dürer (1514, engraving)

Researcher Insights: Daniel Breeze

My PhD seeks to recover the nonhuman (and human) networks of two Victorian vegetarians and public intellectuals: Anna Kingsford (1846-1888) and Henry Salt (1851-1939). It is my proposition that the companionships and encounters each of these figures had with non-human animals were not incidental, but deeply formative – shaping both their intellectual trajectories and their activist commitments. In order to explore this, I trace their animal-human biographies, paying close attention to personal writings, before building up to a sustained engagement with their ideas concerning human-animal relations. These ideas emerged within a wider context of intellectual and social upheaval, shaped by post-Darwinian thought, the movement for women’s advancement, and the rise of democratic socialist ideas.

This approach – one that takes seriously the idea of animals as historical subjects and considers how ideas are shaped through lived, embodied, interspecies experience – has enabled me to illuminate the intersections between animal rights work and other philosophical or political commitments held by Kingsford and Salt. At this stage of the project, I have found myself reflecting on the emotional, material, and even spiritual dimensions of these relationships, and how they complicate our understanding of Victorian thought. Moreover, I am currently thinking and starting to write about how Kingsford’s and Salt’s ideas fit into the longer history of animal rights theory, including more contemporary accounts.

My work is shaped by existing literature in animal-human history and animal studies more broadly, as well as by recent discussions about the use of biography as a historical method. On this latter point, I have become increasingly interested in the place of narrative within the academic writing of history, and the role history might play as an engine of empathy.

Alongside my thesis, I have three articles at various stages of development: one establishing Kingsford as a forgotten philosopher, another examining her editorial work on a women’s periodical, and a third exploring Edward Maitland’s biography of Kingsford.