On 27 September 2026, from 11:30 to 12:45, Transform4Europe will host the Science Café The Shape of Animal Thought: From Cognition to Law as part of the Trieste Next – Festival of Scientific Research.

The event will take place at Area Talk 2, Piazza Unità d'Italia, in Trieste, and will also be livestreamed on Youtube

Bringing together neuroscience and law, the Science Café will feature:

• Cinzia Chiandetti, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Trieste;
• Tomasz Pietrzykowski, Professor of Law at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland.

The discussion will be chaired by Alberto Pallavicini, Professor of Genetics at the University of Trieste.

The 2026 edition will focus on animal cognition and its ethical and legal implications. Over the past decades, scientific research has revealed increasingly complex cognitive abilities in different animal species, ranging from spatial reasoning and numerical skills to apparently innate preferences for particular sounds. These discoveries are not only reshaping our understanding of animal minds; they are also raising questions about the status and protection of non-human animals.

Drawing on evidence from comparative cognition, the speakers will examine the relationship between scientific knowledge and legal norms. If animals possess cognitive abilities once considered uniquely human, should this influence the rights and protections granted to them? Is contemporary law equipped to respond to new scientific insights?

Open to everyone, the event will offer an interdisciplinary perspective on these questions, connecting research on animal cognition with the emerging debate on non-human legal personhood.

This is the second edition in which Transform4Europe has a dedicated space at Trieste Next, a festival of scientific research.

During T4EU's previous participation in 2024, Universidade Católica Portuguesa was represented by William Hasselberger, Professor of Politics and Director of Católica's Digital Ethics Lab. At the Science Café Ethical Dilemmas of Artificial Intelligence, he examined the impact of AI-based digital companions on human relationships, democratic debate and our perception of reality. 

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