Dr. Laura Boyle M.Agr.Sc., Ph.D., is a principal research officer with Teagasc, the Irish Agriculture and Food Development Authority with over 25 years’ experience in farm animal welfare science. Laura is an associate member of the European College of Animal Welfare and Behavioural Medicine, President of the Health and Welfare Commission of the European Federation of Animal Science (EAAP) and Editor in Chief of the Animal Behavior and Welfare specialty section in Frontiers in Veterinary Science. She is Adjunct Professor with the School of Veterinary Medicine, University College Dublin and external examiner of the International MSc in Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law with the University of Edinburgh. As well as informing policy at national level, she contributed to the European Food Safety Authority’s Scientific Opinion on Pig Welfare published in 2022. Dr. Boyle published over 130 peer-reviewed papers, has over 300 scientific abstracts in national and international conference proceedings and supervised 20 PhD students. Her research interests lie in the link between animal health and animal welfare, in the contribution animal welfare makes to the sustainability of animal agriculture and more recently in the #onewelfare implications of agroecological production systems. Laura also has education and advisory roles within the animal and grassland research and innovation centre at Moorepark, Co. Cork where she works. Laura is Chair of the 9th International conference on the Welfare of Animals at Farm Level which will be held in collaboration with the EAAP annual congress in Florence, Italy in 2024.

Lecturer in Sustainable Livestock Production I currently work as a lecturer in the School of Biology in Sustainable Livestock Production with a particular interest in improving the sustainability of pig production, with emphasis on the effect of early life. I joined the University in 2018 as a Research Fellow in Animal Nutrition and Physiology in the monogastric nutrition group. I also completed both my PhD (2014-2018) and integrated masters and BSc in Biology (MBiol, BSc 2010-2014) at the University of Leeds, specialising in the microbiology of the ruminant animal.