Kent Animal Humanities Network

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Picture Credit: Butterfly Book (2007). Andrea Roe in collaboration with Richard Brown. Photographed by Michael Wolchover.

Events Calendar

Upcoming events

May 22-24, 2025  
Rethinking Fables in the Age of the Environmental Crisis

International conference: University of Kent, Canterbury, UK (and online)

Keynote Speakers: Vinciane Despret and Susan McHugh

Call for papers (deadline December 15, 2024)

 

 

Previous events

  • June 12, 2024  Animals and Environments: School of Classics, English and History Symposium: Speakers: Rory Hutchings, Bharanee Moothoosamy, Jane Davidson, Louise Wigglesworth, Francesca Richards, Matt Whittle, Nan Xia, with a Roundtable (Karen Jones, Derek Ryan, Matt Whittle). Animals and Environments (programme pdf)
  • January 29, 2024  Wisdom of Crows: Fables, Science, Storytelling (Online Workshop) Speakers:  Jo Wimpenny, Kaeli Swift, and Thom van Dooren /Chair: Matthew Churlew
  • January 11, 2024   ‘As the spider extends its web, one’s destiny unfolds’: The Cultural Value of Spiders  (Online Workshop) Speakers: Nathan Morehouse (University of Cincinnati), Alberto Corsin Jimenez (ILLA-CSIC), and Cass Lynch (Curtin University)/ Chair: Lisa Jean Moore (SUNY)
  • December 8, 2023: Online Booklaunch, Maritime Animals: Ships, Species, Stories (Penn State University Press, Animalibus: Of Animals and Cultures, 2023). Edited by Kaori Nagai   Interlocutors: Professor Santanu Das (Oxford) and Dr. Sarah Wade (University of East Anglia)
  • November 11, 2023  Rats!  Fabulation, Translation, Transmission  (Online Workshop)Speakers: Prof. Christos Lynteris (University of St. Andrews) , Prof. Lucinda Cole (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Dr Jia Hui Lee (University of Bayreuth), Dr. Jules Skotnes-Brown (University of St. Andrews), Rory Hutchings (University of Kent), Dr Kaori Nagai (University of Kent) 
  • 7 October 2023, Restorative Fables for Wild Canids (Online Workshop)  Speakers: Prof. Susan McHugh (University of New England), Prof. Karen Jones (Kent), Rosa Deen (Kent) / Chair: Prof. Jeanne Dubino (Appalachian State University)
  • 21 June 21 2023: Robert McKay and Susan McHugh, ‘Animal Satire as an Ongoing Fable Tradition’  (talk and pre-book launch)
  • 22 May 2022, 2-3pm: ‘Box Office Bears’ with Professor Hannah O’Regan (Nottingham) and Dr Andy Kesson (Roehampton) on their collaborative AHRC-funded research project ‘Box Office Bears’ and bear-baiting in early modern England.
  • 15 November 2022   New Voices in Animal Humanities (Research talk symposium) 
      • Rosa Deen, Where the Wild Dogs are: The environmental history and present choreography of human – wild dog relations in the context of nature conservation practices in KwaZulu-Natal & Limpopo, South Africa
      • Rory Hutchings, ‘The pasture of rats’: Verminous Bodies of the First World War
      • Bharanee Moothoosamy,  Extinction on a Paradisal Island: Re-storying the Life and Death of the Dodo through Art and Literature
  • 5 October 2022  Public Lecture: Nigel Allsopp, ‘The Hidden Victims of War: Animals in the Ukraine War and other Military Conflicts8-9 November 2021   ANIMAL / PRIVACY: Historical and Conceptual Approaches (Online Workshop) in collaboration with the Centre for Privacy Studies (University of Copenhagen). Please click here for more information
  • KAHN lunchtime talks  (Spring 2021) 
    • 12 February 2021  Emilia Czatkowska (School of Arts), ‘The Call: a More-than-Human Approach to Film Sound’
    • 26 February 2021  Keith Dunmall (School of History), ‘Wind your neck in! A display of male dominance through Giraffes in the Natural History Museum, London’                                                                              
  • 24 October 2020: Sum Poasyum! – celebrating Riddley Walker. KANH panel: ‘Animal Apocalypses: Dogs and other animals’ (chair: Kaori Nagai)
    • Prof. Karen Jones, Dog Tales and the Apocalypse
    • Dr. Angelos Evangelou, Dogs and Border-Crossing
    • Prof. Charlotte Sleigh: ‘It aint us but yet its in us’: Riddley Walker and the beast within
  • Kent Animal Humanities Lecture series (Virtual): Summer 2020 [abstracts ]
    • 27 May 2020: Jane Spencer, ‘I Was An Ass’: Writing about Animals in the Age of Revolution
    • 3 June 2020:  Jeanne Dubino, Global Subjects: Street Dogs in Modern and Contemporary World Literature
    • 10 June 2020: Lucinda Cole (with Rajani Sudan), ‘Great Mortalities’: Animal Plagues, Human Health, and the Medical Posthumanities
  • 7 November 2019 , ‘Mad Dogs, Englishmen and Lascars: Animals and Indian Ocean Seafaring’ by Aaron Jaffer (Curator at Royal Museums Greenwich); Postcolonial Seminar Series: abstract
  • 25-27 April 2019: Maritime Animals: Telling Stories of Animals at Sea. Two and half-day international conference. National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London, UK; Organser: Dr. Kaori Nagai
  • Animal Activism: An Animal Studies Forum.  Guest speaker : Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan (UNSW), ‘What has an Animal Activist done for you Lately? / Roundtable: Peter Adkins (School of English), Kristof Dhont (School of Psychology), Charlotte Sleigh (School of History)  16 November 2018.
  • Pest (a day event with artist performances, workshops, film, animal expert-led tours), Turner Contemporary. Organiser: Rose Thompson. 16 September 2018. Full programme.
  • Horses and Courts: The Reins of Power. An International Symposium. The Wallace Collection, London. Organiser: Prof. Donna Landry, 21-23 March 2018)
  • Birds and Writing​. Speakers: Nicholas Royle, Alex Preston​, Ben Hickman. Organiser: Dr. Sarah Wood (9 February 2018)
  • John Miller (Sheffield), ‘Utopian Protein: Eating Well in the World to Come’ (7 February 2018, the School of English research seminar). Abstract
  • Animal Trophies and Colonial Atrophy: Exploring the Image of Trophy Hunting in Contemporary Literature, Film and Art’ – Matthew Whittle (Kent), 12 October, 16:00
  • Human-Animal Tensions and the Figure of the Melancholy Whale’ – Graham Huggan (Leeds), 19 October, 16:00
  • Writing Animals symposium, March 3 2017
  • H.G. Wells Lecture 2017 -“Good Mothers” and “King Tyrants” in the Mesozoic: An Anthropology of Dinosaur Science and Spectacle – Prof Brian Noble (Dalhousie University, Canada), March 1, 2017
  • Kent Animal Humanities Network Annual Symposium 2016 (September 16, 2016). Canterbury Cathedral Lodge.
  • Book Launch: Cosmopolitan Animals (March 8, 2016). Grimond Lecture Theatre 2, University of Kent. Guest speaker: Dr. Amanda Rees (University of York), ‘Anthropomorphising the Anthropocene: The Pragmatics, Politics and Poetics of Animal Agency’
  • Animal Humanities (School of English Research Seminar Series / Spring Term, 2015). Darwin Lecture Theatre 3, University of Kent.
    • January 21: Jonathan Burt, ‘The Birds Watch the Humans (Thoughts on Raymond Bellour, Helen Macdonald, Vinciane Despret, and Thomas Bewick)’
    • February 18: Margaret Salmon, ‘Oyster: A Discussion of Marine Fantasy and “Natural” History’ (with a screening of the short film Oyster, 2014)
    • March 18: Dr. Lynn Turner (Goldsmiths), ‘Thinking “Outside the Vox”’
    • March 25: Dr. Saurabh Mishra (Sheffield), ‘From the Regal to the Holy: The Symbolic Meanings of Animals in Colonial India’
    • April 1: Professor Garry Marvin (Roehampton), ‘The Art of Tracking: Engaging with Animal Traces’

26-27 October 2012:  Cosmopolitan Animals, an international conference, at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Keynote speakers: Professor Donna Haraway and Professor Simon Glendinning