Heveline Evangelista is an international student from the Northeast region of Brazil. She holds a background in Law, where her interests gradually shifted toward questions of justice, animal rights, and the legal status of nonhuman animals. Her undergraduate research examined the discrepancy between the Brazilian Constitution and the Brazilian Civil Code regarding animals, as well as the broader ethical implications of animal exploitation within a capitalist system. These academic and ethical concerns led her to pursue graduate studies in Sociology at the University of Kentucky, where she is part of the Environment and Society track.

Heveline Evangelista’s research centers on the role of animal sanctuaries as innovative sites for reconfiguring human–nonhuman relationships in the context of the Anthropocene and the climate crisis. She is particularly interested in sanctuaries that provide refuge for animals rescued from industrial farming systems, examining how these institutions are organized, what missions guide them, and how solidarity emerges among humans and animals within these spaces. Her work explores how sanctuaries create possibilities for recognizing nonhuman animals as political agents by allowing them greater freedom and autonomy than in exploitative systems, and how human participants respond to such agency through practices of care, resource allocation, and decision-making.

Theoretically, she seeks to expand Durkheim’s sociology of morality beyond its human-centered framework to include nonhuman animals, and to integrate perspectives from mutual aid, solidarity, and empathy into the study of environmental justice. More broadly, she approaches her research through the lens of the Anthropocene, treating it as a narrative and framework for understanding the ethical, social, and ecological challenges of this new geological era.