Karsten Brensing is a behavioral and marine biologist who completed his PhD on the interaction between humans and dolphins. What began as a childhood fascination with dolphins became a lifelong engagement with a fundamental question: Who is entitled to be recognized as a person, and who decides?

For ten years, Brensing served as Scientific Director of the German office of the international whale and dolphin conservation organization WDC. He advised the EU Commission on the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, and founded the Individual Rights Initiative, which advocates for the rights of non-human persons. As early as 2012, he publicly began advocating for the recognition of cognitively advanced animals as persons, at a time when this was still considered a transgression in scientific circles. His scientific work has reached far beyond academia: several of his books became bestsellers, and his writing has been recognized with multiple literary awards, including Wissensbuch des Jahres (Science Book of the Year).

His book Die Magie der Gemeinschaft (The magic of community 2024) spans the arc from evolutionary biology through cognitive biases in humans to the question of what a shared future with an artificial intelligence equal to or surpassing humans might look like.