Jessica Pierce

Pierce completed her Bachelor of Arts at Scripps College, before studying for a Master of Divinity at Divinity School of Harvard University. She then received a PhD in religious studies (specialising in religious ethics) at the University of Virginia. In the late 1980s, Pierce became a "major advocate" of environmental sustainability in healthcare, epitomising (in the words of the philosopher Cristina Richie) a "'second generation' of environmental bioethicists", after a first generation epitomised by Van Rensselaer Potter. In 1993, Pierce briefly worked as an assistant professor in the Randolph-Macon Women's College Department of Religion. From 1993 to 2000, she was an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in the Humanities and Law section of the Department of Preventive and Societal Medicine. After leaving Boulder in 2006, Pierce became affiliated with the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Denver (later the Anschutz Medical Campus). However, this connection is a loose one; she no longer teaches, and considers herself an "independent entity", focusing on writing instead of the administration and bureaucracy of university work. Having previously focused her research on human health, including her early research interests in the connections between health and the environment, Pierce began to focus her research on animals in the 2000s. Again writing with Bekoff, she published Unleashing Your Dog in 2019 and her Dogpedia: A Brief Compendium of Canine Curiosities was published in 2024. ==Philosophy==

In Environmentalism and the New Logic of Business, Freeman, Dodd, and Pierce argue that businesses should lead on environmental issues rather than merely meeting state-mandated standards. In The Ethics of Environmentally Responsible Health Care, Pierce and Jameton explore the environmental impact of the health sector. Bekoff and Pierce argue in Wild Justice that animals display evidence of consciousness, cooperation, empathy, justice, and morality. In ''The Animals' Agenda'', Pierce's second book with Bekoff, the authors argue that the science of animal welfare should be replaced by a science of animal well-being. In Unleashing Your Dog they argue that people who live with dogs need to become adept at seeing the world from dogs' point of view to give their dogs a good life. In ''A Dog's World'', the authors challenge assumptions about dogs by offering an extended thought experiment of a world in which dogs live without humans. The Last Walk explores the ethics of companion animal death. Run, Spot, Run explores the ethical ambiguity of pet ownership in general, while ''Who's a Good Dog?'' looks at the ethics of dog-human relationships. ==Selected bibliography==

Pierce has authored or co-authored over 50 articles in peer reviewed journals and chapters in scholarly edited collections. Her popular writing includes work for The New York Times, Scientific American, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, Aeon, and New Scientist. • Freeman, R. Edward, Jessica Pierce and Richard H. Dodd (2000). Environmentalism and the New Logic of Business: How Firms Can be Profitable and Leave Our Children a Living Planet. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Pierce, Jessica, and Andrew Jameton (2004). The Ethics of Environmentally Responsible Health Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Pierce, Jessica (2005). Morality Play: Case Studies in Ethics. New York: McGraw-Hill. • Second edition published by Waveland Press in 2013. • Pierce, Jessica and George Randels, eds. (2009). Contemporary Bioethics: A Reader with Cases. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Bekoff, Marc, and Jessica Pierce (2010). Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • Pierce, Jessica (2012). The Last Walk: Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • Pierce, Jessica (2016). Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • Bekoff, Marc, and Jessica Pierce (2017). ''The Animals' Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age''. Boston: Beacon Press. • Shanan, Amir, Tamara Shearer, and Jessica Pierce, eds. (2017). Hospice and Palliative Care for Companion Animals: Principles and Practice. Hoboken: Wiley. • Bekoff, Marc, and Jessica Pierce (2019). Unleashing Your Dog: A Field Guide to Giving Your Canine Companion the Best Life Possible. Novato, California: New World Library. • Pierce, Jessica, and Marc Bekoff (2021). ''A Dog's World: Imagining the Lives of Dogs in a World without Humans''. Princeton: Princeton University Press. • Pierce, Jessica (2023). ''Who's a Good Dog? And How to Be a Better Human''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. • Pierce, Jessica (2024). Dogpedia: A Brief Compendium of Canine Curiosities. Princeton, NJ:: Princeton University Press. ==References==