Bovenkerk focuses on animal domestication, moral status of animals, climate change ethics, biotechnology and deliberative democracy. She received her PhD from the University of Melbourne (Australia) on a dissertation titled “The Biotechnology Debate: Democracy in the face of intractable disagreement” where she analysed moral disagreement that exists in the debate on animal and plant biotechnology, and proposed political solutions and approaches for governments to deal with those politically, in particular how disagreements could be handled in a deliberative democracy.