Roi Mandel Briefer, Ph.D.

Roi Mandel Briefer is an animal welfare researcher at the University of Copenhagen. His research explores the behaviour of companion and farmed animals, with a particular interest in how scientific knowledge can be applied to improve animal welfare and foster more informed relationships between humans and other animals.

His research integrates behavioural science, cognition, and human decision making to advance evidence based approaches to animal welfare across farm and companion animal systems. His work spans behavioural indicators of disease and recovery, environmental enrichment, and the assessment of animal emotional expression. Mandel’s recent scholarship investigates the structural and epistemic factors shaping welfare science, and he is the lead author of the paper in which he and his colleagues coined the term pragmatism bias to characterise how funding structures, operational constraints, and researchers’ own framing decisions influence research agendas. His research agenda advances a more transparent, reflexive, and animal centred scientific practice aimed at supporting meaningful and systemic welfare improvements.