Art. Dr Yvette Watt is a Lecturer and Studio Coordinator of Painting at the Tasmanian College of the Arts, University of Tasmania. She is Lead Researcher of the College of Arts and Law Animal Studies Theme Area (ASTA) and Co-Director
of MERG. Watt was a founding member of the Australasian Animal Studies Association and is a current committee member of Minding Animals International, and Minding Animals Australia. Watt's art practice spans 30 years and includes numerous
solo and group exhibitions. She has been actively involved in animal advocacy since the mid 1980s, and her artwork is heavily informed by her activism. She is a founder of Animal Rights Advocates (WA) and Animals Tasmania, and was a long
term member of the Animals Australia executive. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections in Australia including Parliament House, Canberra, Artbank and the Art Gallery of Western Australia. Watt is a co-editor of and contributor
to Considering Animals: Contemporary Studies in Human-Animal Relations (Ashgate, 2011). Other publications include 'Down on the Farm: Why do Artists Avoid Farm Animals as Subject Matter?”, in Meat Cultures, Annie Potts (ed), Brill (2016),
'Animal Factories: Exposing Sites of Capture', in Captured: Animals Within Culture, Melissa Boyd, ed, (Palgrave McMillan, 2014) and 'Artists, Animals and Ethics', in Antennae: the journal of nature in culture, (issue 19, Winter 2011). Watt
was commissioned to contribute an entry on 'Animals Art and Ethics' for the Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, (Marc Bekoff ed., Greenwood Press, 2010).