Research Interests
Animal rights, Irish studies, feminism, social movements, veganism

Biography

Dr. Wrenn is Senior Lecturer of Sociology with the School of Social Sciences and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements at the University of Kent. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology with Colorado State University in 2016. She was awarded Exemplary Diversity Scholar, 2016 by the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity. She served as council member with the American Sociological Association’s Animals & Society section (2013-2016), was elected Chair in 2018, and co-founded the International Association of Vegan Sociologists in 2020. She serves as Book Review Editor for Society & Animals, Consulting Editor for Psychology of Human-Animal Intergroup Relations, and past Editor for The Sociological Quarterly, is a member of The Vegan Society’s Research Advisory Committee, and hosts Sociology & Animals Podcast. She is the author of A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016), Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019), Animals in Irish Society (SUNY Press 2021), Vegan Witchcraft: Contemporary Magical Practice and Multispecies Social Change (Routledge 2025), and Vegan Feminism: History, Theory, Activism (forthcoming, Bloomsbury).

Key Publications

•  A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory (Palgrave MacMillan 2016)
• Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits (University of Michigan Press 2019)
• Animals in Irish Society (SUNY Press 2021)
• Vegan Witchcraft (Routledge 2025)
• w. A. Lizardi. 2020. “Older, Greener, and Wiser: Charting the Experiences of Older Women in the American Vegan Movement.” Journal of Women & Aging. Online first.
• 2019. “The Vegan Society and Social Movement Professionalization, 1944-2017.” Food and Foodways 27 (3): 190-210.
• 2019. “Atheism in the American Animal Rights Movement:
  An Invisible Majority.” Environmental Values 28 (6): 715-739. 
• 2018. “Pussy Grabs Back. Bestialized Sexual Politics and the Intersectional Failure in the Protest Posters for the 2017 Women’s March.” Feminist Media Studies 19 (6): 803-821. 
• 2017. “Trump Veganism: A Political Survey of American Vegans in the Era of Identity Politics.” Societies 7 (4): 32. 
• 2017. “Fat Vegan Politics: A Survey of Fat Vegan Activists’ Online Experiences with Social Movement Sizeism.” Fat Studies 6 (1): 90-102.
• w. J. Clark, M. Judge, K. Gilchrist, D. Woodlock, K. Dotson, R. Spanos, and J. Wrenn. 2015. “The Medicalization of Nonhuman Animal Rights: Frame Contestation and the Exploitation of Disability.” Disability & Society 30 (9): 1307-1327. 

Contact

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