Susana Monsó

Hey there! Welcome to my website. I’m a philosopher working on animal minds and animal ethics, currently an associate professor in the Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science of UNED, Madrid (Spain). Feel free to nose around!

If you want to get in touch with me, you can send me an email to smonso [at] fsof [dot] uned [dot] es

You can also find me on Bluesky, ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and PhilPeople.

All nonhuman animal pictures on this website are from Unsplash.

I was born in Madrid in 1988. I hold a BA in Philosophy from Complutense University of Madrid, an MA in Global Ethics and Human Values from King’s College London, and a PhD in Philosophy from UNED, Spain. I have been a post-doc fellow at the University of Graz and at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna and am now based in the Department of Logic, History, and Philosophy of Science of UNED.

Since you clicked your way into this site, you may be interested in some further random facts about me:

My pronouns are she/her.

I am the co-founder of the Philosophy of Animal Minds and Behavior Association and a member of the METIS research group. I also run the Animal Cognition & Ethics mailing list.

In my free time I enjoy acting in plays of dubious quality, playing board games, and reading novels with badass female characters.

My surname is pronounced “Mons-OH”, and I will secretly judge you if you spell it without an accent.

If I could belong to a different species, I would choose to be a humpback whale.

I’m the author of Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death, which has been recommended in The New York Times and The Guardian, and selected as one of the best books of 2024 by The New Yorker. It is currently being translated into eight languages.

I’m interested in what animals are capable of feeling, thinking, and doing, and what this means for the sort of treatment that we owe them.

Most of my research has focused on (socio-)cognitive capacities traditionally viewed as uniquely human, such as morality or a concept of death. I’m interested in exploring to what extent these preconceptions respond to over-intellectualised accounts of these capacities or to skewed interpretations of the available data. I am also involved in devising conceptually more robust (and more ethical) ways of studying animal minds, and reflecting on the ethical implications of new discoveries in comparative cognition.

My work is highly inter-disciplinary and involves collaborations with philosophers and scientists from different fields. In addition, I aim for my research to have an impact beyond academia, and have published popular pieces in outlets like TIME magazine, Aeon, and New Scientist.

You can check out what I’ve written until now by having a look at my publications.

Academic publications (selection):

Monsó, S. & Danón, L. (forthcoming): ‘Death-feigning, animal concepts, and the use of empirical case studies in animal cognition.’ The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science. DOI: 10.1086/733889

Monsó, S. (2024): Playing Possum: How Animals Understand Death. Princeton University Press.

Melis, G. & Monsó, S. (2024): ‘Are humans the only rational animals?’ The Philosophical Quarterly, 74 (3), 844–864.

Gruen, L. & Monsó, S. (2024): Revision of the ‘Moral status of animals’ entry. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Monsó, S. & Moore, R. (2024): ‘Normative expectations in human and nonhuman animals.’ Perspectives on Psychological Science, 19 (1), 51–52.

Monsó, S. & Hintze, S. (2023): ‘For their own good? The unseen harms of disenhancing farmed animals’ in Abbate, C. E. & Bobier, C. (eds.): New Omnivorism and Strict Veganism: Critical Perspectives, pp. 201–208. Routledge.

Monsó, S. (2022): ‘How to tell if animals can understand death.’ Erkenntnis, 87, 117–136.

Monsó, S. & Andrews, K. (2022): ‘Animal moral psychologies’ in Vargas, M. & Doris, J. (eds.): The Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology, pp. 388–420. New York: Oxford University Press.

Monsó, S. & Osuna-Mascaró, A.J. (2021): ‘Death is common, so is understanding it: The concept of death in other species.’ Synthese, 199 (1), 2251–2275.

Monsó, S. & Wrage, B. (2021): ‘Tactful animals: How the study of touch can inform the animal morality debate.’ Philosophical Psychology, 34 (1), 1–27.

Andrews, K. & Monsó, S. (2021): Rewrite of the ‘Animal cognition’ entry. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Monsó, S. & Osuna-Mascaró, A.J. (2020): ‘Problems with basing insect ethics on individuals’ welfare.’ Animal Sentience, 29 (8).

Monsó, S., Benz-Schwarzburg, J., & Bremhorst, A. (2018): ‘Animal morality: What it means and why it matters.’ The Journal of Ethics, 22 (3–4), 283–310.

Monsó, S. (2017): ‘Morality without mindreading.’ Mind & Language, 32 (3), 338–57.

Rowlands, M. & Monsó, S. (2017): ‘Animals as reflexive thinkers: the aponoian paradigm’ in Kalof, L. (ed.): The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, pp: 319-343. New York: Oxford University Press.

Monsó, S. (2015): ‘Empathy and morality in behaviour readers.’ Biology & Philosophy, 30 (5), 671-690.

Outreach (selection):

Ongoing projects:

• A paper on the philosophy of comparative cognition, with Kristin Andrews.
• Another paper on the philosophy of comparative cognition, with Richard Moore.
• A paper on the ethical implications of animals’ concept of death, with Eze Paez.
• A paper on animal medicine, with Cristian Saborido. [preprint]

For a full list of publications, click here.

This is a selection of my appearances in the press. For a full list, click here.

Playing Possum by Susana Monsó review – do animals understand death? — Review of Playing Possum in The Guardian (01/01/2025)

Death becomes them — Review of Playing Possum in the Times Literary Supplement (20/12/2024)

The best books to give as gifts this Christmas — Mention in The Guardian (08/12/2024)

The best books of 2024 — Mention in The New Yorker (04/12/2024)

Books of the year 2024 — Mention in The New Statesman (13/11/2024)

Beasts and the Big Sleep — Review of Playing Possum in the Wall Street Journal (12/11/2024)

6 new books we recommend this week — Mention in The New York Times (31/10/2024)

What ants and orcas can teach us about death — Interview for The New York Times (29/10/2024)

What do animals understand about death? — Review of Playing Possum in The New Yorker (28/10/2024)

What do animals know about death? — Review of Playing Possum in The New York Times (23/10/2024)

How do animals understand death? — Interview for the American radio programme Science Friday (18/10/2024)

Do animals understand death? — Interview for the Boston Globe (10/10/2024)

‘Elephants show immense interest in corpses’: Susana Monsó, the philosopher examining what animals know about death — Interview for The Observer, Sunday supplement of The Guardian (06/10/2024)

Do animals know that they will die? — Mention in the American magazine The Atlantic (09/09/2024)

Mortal coils — Review of Playing Possum by Sy Montgomery for The American Scholar (03/09/2024)

How animals grieve — Interview for the 1A show on the American National Public Radio (26/06/2024)

Susana Monsó, filósofa: “Estudiar cómo viven los animales la muerte nos ayuda a naturalizar el duelo” — Interview for the Spanish newspaper El País (05/07/2023)

Do animals grieve? — Interview for the American podcast Unexplainable (Vox) (28/06/2023)

La muerte en el mundo animal — Interview for the Spanish national TV station La 2 (23/06/2023)

Susana Monsó: «Los perros y los gatos nos tienen totalmente domesticados» — Interview for the Spanish magazine XLSemanal (25/09/2022)

Animal minds and animal morality — Interview (with Kristin Andrews) for the American podcast Many Minds (28/04/2022)

Do animals understand what it means to die? — Interview for VICE magazine (02/02/2022)

‘Manche Tiere ahmen verwesende Leichen nach’ — Interview for the German newspaper Der Spiegel (30/10/2021)

¿Tienen moral los animales? — Interview for the Spanish press agency EFE (picked up by the Spanish newspapers El Mundo and Público, among others) (02/07/2019)

You can download my CV by clicking here.