Curriculum Vitae

Richard Ryder read Experimental Psychology at Cambridge, researched in Social Psychology at Columbia, New York, qualified in Clinical Psychology in Edinburgh, trained in Psychotherapy at the Tavistock Clinic and worked as a psychologist in Oxford for twenty years. Later he took his PhD in Political and Social Sciences at Cambridge and became Mellon Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University in New Orleans. His books are:

Victims of Science : The Use of Animals in Research, Davis-Poynter, 1975; revised edition Centaur Press, 1983; Dutch translation, 1980, Norwegian, 1984, Hungarian, 1995, Russian, 1996

Animal Rights : A Symposium (Joint Editor), Centaur Press, 1979

Animal Revolution : Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism, Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1989, revised version Berg, Oxford, 2000

The Political Animal : The Conquest of Speciesism, McFarland, 1998

Animal Welfare and the Environment (Editor) Duckworth, 1992

Painism : A Modern Morality, Opengate Press, 2001

The Calcrafts of Rempstone Hall : The Intriguing History of a Dorset Dynasty, Halsgrove, 2005

Putting Morality Back into Politics, Imprint Academic, 2006

Nelson, Hitler and Diana : Studies in Trauma and Celebrity, Imprint Academic, 2009

Biographical Note

Richard Ryder created the term speciesism while working in Oxford in early 1970.

As a key figure in the modern animal rights revival Ryder appeared on the first-ever televised discussion of animal rights (The Lion’s Share, Scottish Television) in December 1970. Together with Bridget Brophy, Ryder then recorded several philosophical discussions for the Open University, again emphasising ideas around speciesism. He outlined speciesism in his contribution to the seminal philosophical work Animals Men and Morals edited by the Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch and John Harris in 1971.

From 1969 Ryder organised protests against animal experiments and bloodsports. He continued to promote his ideas about speciesism in leaflets and broadcasts in the early 1970s, culminating in the publication of his Victims of Science in 1975 - a book that provoked debates in Parliament and on television and was described by The Spectator at the time as ‘a morally and historically important book’.

Ryder declined Singer’s invitation to be co-author of Animal Liberation (1975) because he was too busy campaigning for animal protection, but lent Singer material for this classic work. Dr Ryder was elected to the RSPCA Council in 1971, first becoming Chairman in 1977.

In 1980 he was founding Chairman of the Liberal Democrat Animal Protection Group, and later ran for Parliament, was Director of the Political Animal Lobby and then Mellon Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Tulane University. Ryder coined the term painism to describe his wider moral theory in 1990. He has several times broadcast on the BBC’s Moral Maze.