Christine Townend | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Townend painted by artist Gerlinde Thomas [2] for her 2014 exhibition "On The Face Of It" | |
| Born | 20 July 1944 Melbourne, Victoria |
| Occupation | writer, artist, activist |
| Education | Townend holds a B.A.(Hons.) from Macquarie University and is currently[ when? ] completing a Doctor of Arts at the University of Sydney. [3] |
| Website | |
| workingforanimals | |
Christine Elizabeth Townend (born 20 July 1944) is an Australian animal rights activist, artist, and author. [4]
Townend in Melbourne on 20 July 1944. [5] [6] She grew up in Sydney's lower North Shore. Townend had her first novel published by Macmillan in 1974. It was described as a precursor to Australian feminist literature and has recently been republished on-line by Macmillan Memento. [7] She then received a 6-month fellowship from the Australian Council for the Arts. [8] In 1975 Townend journeyed to India, returning with a commitment to animal rights. She founded Animal Liberation in 1976, having been influenced by Peter Singer's eponymous book; she and Singer co-founded Animals Australia (as the Australian Federation of Animal Societies) in 1980. She joined the Australian Democrats, running for election under their banner four times before joining Milo Dunphy on an "Environment Group" ticket in 1988. [9] At the time she was Secretary of the Australian and New Zealand Federation of Animal Societies, a member of the NSW Animal Welfare Advisory Council and the CSIRO Advisory Committee on the Ethics of Animals in Research. [9] In 1990 she moved to India to run an animal shelter, Help in Suffering in Jaipur, [9] which she managed until 2007. [4] Whilst living at the shelter in Jaipur, she founded two other animal shelters in Kalimpong and Darjeeling.
Townend is also an artist. She has held five solo art exhibitions. She has used her art as a means of drawing attention to the needs and interests of animals. [10]
She founded Working for Animals Inc, an Australian NGO with the purpose of raising funds for animal shelters in India. [11]
In 2017 Townend was appointed Director and Chair of the Animals Australia Board. [12] In January 2019 Townend was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for 'service to animal welfare'. [13]
She has authored books on animal rights, including In Defence of Living Things (1979), A Voice for the Animals (1981) and Pulling the Wool: A New Look at the Australian Wool Industry (1986), and fiction, from her first book, The Beginning of Everything and the End of Everything Else (1974), to more recent explorations of Indian spirituality such as The Hidden Master (2002) and The Teaching of Vimala Thakar (2010). [9] [14] In 2007 her biography Christine’s Ark, written by journalist John Little was published by Macmillan. [15] Moti, An Indian Elephant was published in India in 2014. Townend holds a Doctorate in poetry from the University of Sydney. Her poetry collection, Walking with Elephants was published by Island Press in July 2015. Her memoir, A Life for Animals, was published by Sydney University Press in 2017, with a foreword by Peter Singer. [16]
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales, where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Clancy of the Overflow" (1889), "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) and "Waltzing Matilda" (1895), regarded widely as Australia's unofficial national anthem.
Maneka Gandhi is an Indian politician, animal rights activist, and environmentalist. She is a member of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament and a member of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). She is the widow of Indian politician Sanjay Gandhi. She has been a minister in four governments, most recently in Narendra Modi's government from May 2014 to May 2019.
Wendy Sharpe is an Australian artist who lives and works in Sydney and Paris. She has held over 70 solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, been awarded many national awards and artist residencies for her work, and was an official Australian War Artist to East Timor in 1999–2000.
Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees AM is an Australian academic, human rights activist and author who is the founder of the Sydney Peace Foundation and Emeritus Professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Larissa Yasmin Behrendt is an Australian legal academic, writer, filmmaker and Indigenous rights advocate. As of 2022 she is a professor of law and director of research and academic programs at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology Sydney, and holds the inaugural Chair in Indigenous Research at UTS.
Lee Rhiannon is a former Australian politician who was a Senator for New South Wales between July 2011 and August 2018. She was elected at the 2010 federal election, representing the Australian Greens. Prior to her election to the Federal Parliament, Rhiannon was a Greens NSW member of the New South Wales Legislative Council between 1999 and 2010.
Nancy Keesing was an Australian poet, writer, editor and promoter of Australian literature.
RSPCA Australia is an Australian peak organisation established in 1981 to promote animal welfare. Each state and territory of Australia has an RSPCA organisation that predates and is affiliated with RSPCA Australia.
Debjani Chatterjee MBE is an Indian-born British poet and writer. She lives in Sheffield, England.
Vanessa "Van" Badham is an Australian writer and activist. A playwright and novelist, she writes dramas and comedies. She is a regular columnist for the Guardian Australia website.
Anita Marianne Heiss is an Aboriginal Australian author, poet, cultural activist and social commentator. She is an advocate for Indigenous Australian literature and literacy, through her writing for adults and children and her membership of boards and committees.
Animals Australia is an Australian animal protection organisation. Its aim is to investigate and expose animal cruelty, inspire kindness to animals through public awareness campaigns—particularly focused on farmed animals—and provide funding and support to other animal organisations where appropriate, for example in emergency response during the 2019/2020 Australian Black Summer bushfires and COVID-19 pandemic.
Voiceless is an independent, non-profit animal protection charity based in Sydney, Australia, whose work is focused on raising awareness of animals suffering in factory farming and the kangaroo industry in Australia.
Susannah Fullerton OAM, FRSN is a Canadian-born Australian author and literary historian. She has been president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia since 1996, which is the largest literary society in Australia. She is also patron of the Rudyard Kipling Society of Australia, and patroness of The International Georgette Heyer Society. Her subject matter includes Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, the Mitford family, Samuel Pepys, Vita Sackville-West, Oscar Wilde, George Eliot, the Romantic Poets, and Shakespeare.
Animal Liberation is a nonprofit animal rights organisation based in Sydney, founded by Christine Townend and led by current CEO Lynda Stoner. It was formed in 1976, one year after the release of Animal Liberation by Australian philosopher Peter Singer. Animal Liberation's primary campaigns are to advocate against the use of animals for food, clothing, research, sport and entertainment, by promoting a vegan lifestyle.
Joan Kerr (1938–2004) was an Australian academic and cultural preservationist. Initially her interest was sparked in preserving the architectural heritage of Australia, but over time her interests spread to art history and Australian culture in general. She taught at many universities throughout the country and was involved in Historical Societies and Preservation Trusts in a variety of the territories. She wrote books on Australia's historic architecture, feminist artists, cartoonists and her major life work was producing the Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870.
Siobhan O'Sullivan was an Australian political scientist and political theorist. She was an associate professor in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales. Her research focused, among other things, on animal welfare policy and the welfare state. She was the author of Animals, Equality and Democracy and a coauthor of Getting Welfare to Work and Buying and Selling the Poor. She co-edited Contracting-out Welfare Services and The Political Turn in Animal Ethics. She was the founding host of the regular animal studies podcast Knowing Animals.
Roberta Perkins was an Australian sociologist, writer, and transgender rights and sex worker rights activist. She wrote several books and multiple academic articles on the semi-nomadic lives of transgender sex workers, and established the first assistance center for transgender people in Australia.
Alice Eve-Marie Spigelman is a Hungarian-born Australian clinical psychologist, writer and human rights advocate. She is currently chair of Sculpture by the Sea. Her most recent book is The Budapest Job, a thriller set in 1989, at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union. She has written a play A Kind of Reunion, to be premiered in Sydney, NSW in December 2020.
Elaine Stuart Lindsay is an Australian academic whose work has focussed on literature and feminist theology. She was instrumental in the development of the Women-Church journal which provided publishing opportunities in feminist theology for Australian women.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
