A graduate in Philosophy and Psychology from the University of Liège, Despret immediately became interested in the intersections between scientific experimentation, ethology, cultural anthropology, animal psychology and epistemology of the sciences. Her research reviews the relationship between humans and animals, the inter-subjective affections and connections that such relations produce and the ways that human science and philosophical thought are connected to the animal world. 

Cuerpos, emociones, experimentación y psicología (2015), A la felicidad de los muertos: Relatos de quienes quedan (2016) and ¿Qué dirían los animales si les hiciéramos las preguntas correctas? (2018) are books that have made her a world reference in the field of thought known as animal studies.