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 (final conference)

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

Keynote speakers

Vinciane Despret (University of Liège, Belgium)

Becoming fabulous Humanimal with Michel Serres

Susan McHugh (University of New England, USA)

Just Fairy Tales? Beyond the Scientific Schism between Plant and Animal Fables

with a Storytelling Event

featuring Suniti Namjoshi

 

For further details, visit the conference website.

 

 

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