Paula Casal works at UPF's Law Department, having held positions at Reading University (2004-08) and Keele University (1996-2004). She was also Fellow in Ethics at Harvard's Kennedy School (1999-2000), Visiting Fellow, also at Harvard (2000-1), Hoover Fellow at Université Catholique de Louvain (2001-02), Leverhulme Research Fellow at Oxford University (2002-04) and Christopher Family Fellow at Stanford University (2018). Her work has appeared in journals like Ethics, Economics and Philosophy, Journal of Medical Ethics, Journal of Moral Philosophy, Journal of Political Philosophy, Political Philosophy, Political Studies and Utilitas. She is Associate Editor of Politics, Philosophy & Economics, and Law, Ethics and Philosophy, Co-founder and Co-director of the UPF Center for Animal Ethics, and President of the Great Ape Project-Spain. A heavily revised English language edition of her last book, Los derechos de los simios (Trotta 2022), coauthored with Peter Singer, is forthcoming in 2026.

My work in political philosophy examines how social institutions should distribute benefits and burdens within families and countries, as well as across countries, generations, and species. I discuss the employment of taxes and other instruments to address problems like gender inequality, poverty, and climate change. Besides analyzing the distributive principles of equality, priority, and sufficiency, and whether the distribution of welfare, resources, or capabilities is what matters, I have also written about more concrete issues. These include procreative externalities, green fiscal reform, landlocked countries, and religious and cultural accommodation. From a biologically informed perspective, I have written about topics such as gender, longevity, xenotransplantation, and the therapy/enhancement debate. Finally, I contribute to animal ethics, most recently with “Distributive Justice and Animals,” forthcoming in Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy.