Katie Gillespie

Kathryn (Katie) Gillespie, PhD, is the VP of Research and Strategy at Farm Forward. With a doctorate in Geography, her expertise in research, publishing, and higher-ed teaching is centered on topics related to human-animal relations, food systems, multispecies ethnography, and environmental issues, especially as they relate to the role of animals in the food industry. As a thought leader in research and strategy, her career has spanned academic, corporate, and nonprofit settings.

Gillespie is the author of two books, The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 (University of Chicago Press, 2018)—an exploration of the lives of cows in the dairy industry—and The Sound of Feathers: Attentive Living in a World Beyond Ourselves (Duke University Press, 2026). Her work has been reviewed in such venues as Nature, Times Literary Supplement, Publisher’s Weekly, and Washington Independent Review of Books. She has co-edited three volumes of essays and has published in numerous academic journals and media outlets.

She is also Associate Director of the Center for Food Systems Transformation at the University of San Diego.