Peter Bo Zhang
I am a writer and researcher exploring how institutions shape our relationships with animals, environments, and emerging technologies. My work asks what becomes possible—or impossible—when those relationships are translated into categories produced by law, science, and technology.
I am trained in law at the University of Toronto and history at the University of Cambridge.
Research
Constructive Scienter: An Animal-Law Answer to the AI Responsibility Gap
the lessons animal law offers for AI governance
Urban Pollution and Contagious Diseases in Jiangnan, 1850–1900
how polluted water and the built environment reshaped urban ideas of contagion
Animals and the Relational Life of Law: Indigenous Legal Traditions and Stray Animal Governance
how animals create legal duties across communities
Writing
Counting Fish is a Kind of Prayer
counting salmon, and the discipline of taking only enough
how law can assign the costs of pet abandonment
food, politeness, and the silences kept at a shared table
why caregivers bear the costs of others’ abandonment
who bears responsibility when environmental judgment passes through code
Speaking
2026
Neither Person nor Thing: Algorithmic Accountability, Nonhuman Governance, and Constitutional Politics of TechnoPower
Society for Social Studies of Science
the human choices behind AI responsibility
2026
Reflections on Rewriting Harvard College v. Canada (Commissioner of Patents)
Animal Law & Advocacy Conference
how patent law sorted life into forms worth protecting
2026
Navigating Environmental Law and Maintaining Hope Amid Global Conflict
University of Toronto
2026–25
The Living Corpus of Indigenous Harvest Rights
University of Toronto
·
Massey College
how Indigenous rights to hunt and fish depend on a living ecosystem, and the promise of Indigenous guardianship
2025
Fireside Chat with the Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, Former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada
Massey College
2023
Animals, Pollution, and Epidemics in Early Modern China
University of St. Andrews
·
Durham University
·
York University
·
University of Cambridge
how communities respond to epidemic uncertainties through animals
2022–21
Legal Consciousness and Realpolitik in Early Imperial China
University of Cambridge
·
McGill University
·
International Society for Chinese Law & Society
law as a practical craft for unstable political worlds
2018
A Conversation with PETA
Vision Shapers Forum
·
McGill University