Writer and Researcher
Melanie Challenger is a writer, researcher and broadcaster on the history of ideas, particularly about our relationship to the living world.
She is the current deputy co-chair of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics and a vice president of the RSPCA. She is the author of “On Extinction: How We Became Estranged From Nature” (2011), “How to Be Animal: What It Means To Be Human” (2021) and anthology editor of “Animal Dignity: Philosophical Reflections on Non-Human Existence” (2023).
She is also a founding member of the Animals in the Room project, which seeks to establish representation methods for the interests of non-human animals. She writes widely for publications and has participated in a number of films, including the BBC series “Nature and Us: A History Through Art.” She hosts “Enter the Psychosphere: A Kinds of Minds” podcast series about intelligence and agency in nature.
Ms. Challenger began her life in the creative arts, and has published two award-winning collections of poems and produced libretti for James Whitbourn and Tarik O'Regan. She is involved in a long-standing collaboration with composer Mark Simpson, with whom she has created “Pleasure,” the opera co-commissioned by the Royal Opera House, Aldeburgh Music and Opera North; and the South Bank Sky Arts award -winning oratorio “The Immortal,” commissioned and produced by the Manchester International Festival. The creative duo is currently working on a new opera for Glyndebourne.
She is a 2025 National Geographic Explorer.
