Barbara Noske


Barbara Miriam Noske is a Dutch cultural anthropologist and philosopher. She is known for first describing the concept of the animal industrial complex.

Academic career

Noske holds an MA in socio-cultural anthropology and a PhD in philosophy from the University of Amsterdam. In the 1990s, Noske taught environmental ethics, ecology and ecofeminism at York University in Toronto while a research fellow in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. She then worked as a research fellow at the Research Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney.
Noske specializes in the human–animal relationship. Her research focuses to determine whether and where dividing lines lie, from scientific, ethical and historical perspectives. Her writings are thematically in the critical animal studies and deep ecological ecofeminism.