A major strand of Gisella’s recent work concerns the structural failures of animal welfare governance in the United Kingdom. In collaboration with the Centre for Animals and Social Justice (CASJ), she has helped develop proposals for a Governmental Animal Protection Commission, examining how animal welfare might be given stronger oversight, better coordination, and greater institutional weight across government.
In April 2026, she presented her draft APC position paper at a Westminster conference hosted by the Schweitzer Institute and the CASJ, setting out the case for a more coherent and effective framework for animal protection policy. This work is concerned not only with legal reform, but with deeper questions of public administration: how responsibilities are distributed, how systems fail, and what kinds of institutions are needed to secure meaningful ethical accountability.
Gisella’s research also engages broader questions of symmetry, resilience, and public ethics. At the Royal Society symposium Edge of Chaos: Exploring Dynamic Symmetry Theory in May 2026, she presented a paper on governance, infrastructure, and ethics, exploring how systems function best between rigidity and disorder, and how those insights might inform the design of governmental policy frameworks. (See video below.)
This line of inquiry reflects a wider interest in the relationship between theoretical models and practical institutions. It asks how ideas drawn from complexity and symmetry can help explain why some systems become brittle or chaotic, while others achieve balance, adaptability, and durability.
Alongside her own research, Gisella co-edits The Schweitzer Institute Journal and OXQ: The Oxford Quarterly Journal of Symmetry & Asymmetry. Through this editorial work, she helps shape scholarship across environmental ethics, science, sustainability, and emerging interdisciplinary debates.
Her broader aim is to make complex ideas intellectually rigorous, publicly accessible, and institutionally relevant. Later in 2026, she will continue this work at Balliol College, Oxford, where she will co-host a conference and speak on governance, infrastructure, and ethics.