Participants

Marta Tafalla

Barcelona, 1972

Marta Tafalla is a lecturer in Ethics and Aesthetics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and a member of the scientific board of the Centre for Animal Ethics at the Pompeu Fabra University. After her early academic research on the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, she moved into the field of relations between humans, other animals, and nature from the ethical and aesthetic perspectives. She has been a guest researcher at universities in Freiburg, Munster, Potsdam, and London and her articles have been published in academic reviews including Estetika, Contemporary Aesthetics, Environmental Ethics, Isegoria, Dilemata and Bioética y Derecho. She also publishes occasional articles in the newspaper Ara and the blog El Caballo de Nietzsche in eldiario.es.

In her work in defence of animal rights and combatting anthropocentrism, Tafalla has edited the anthology Los derechos de los animales (Idea Books, 2004) and will soon publish another book Estética Ecoanimal (Plaza y Valdés, 2019). She has also worked in documentaries on animalism and has spoken in the Catalan parliament in the debate on the use of animals in circuses.

The fact of being born without a sense of smell has led her to give special attention to sensoriality. She popularised anosmia with her novel Nunca sabrás a qué huele Bagdad (UAB, 2010 – You’ll Never Know What Baghdad Smells Like), and was awarded the 2011 Aposta Prize for her study on sense of smell and anosmia in aesthetic appreciation (Olfacte i anòsmia en l'apreciació estètica).