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The Elephant in the Ivory Tower: The Anti-Disciplinary Animal

Whilst many researchers across the University engage with the non-human animal as the subject or object of study, the challenge the non-human offers to the overall framework of academic knowledge has yet to be explored.

Bringing together work which focuses the non-human across disciplinary boundaries, this three-year project will ask how non-humans disrupt the conventions that have historically defined knowledge as human, and consider the possibilities they offer for the creation of an ‘anti-disciplinary’ academic space.

Our aims are:

  • To build a radically anti-disciplinary human-animal studies that is unapologetically curiosity-driven and committed to inclusive discussions across methods and approaches within and beyond the University.
  • To showcase innovative and world-leading human-animal studies scholarship by thinkers and creative practitioners through a series of lectures, symposia and workshops.
  • To generate creative and critical methodologies for engaging with animals that extend beyond disciplinary silos.

Each year, we will identify and interrogate key questions about the human / non-human intersection that have the potential to reconfigure the formal boundaries of scholarly knowledge: What makes an animal a person? Do animals have a future? What is a good death? How do we see and feel extinction? Join us to explore these questions, and help us to identify others, in a series of talks, symposia and workshops; help us write an Anti-Disciplinary Animal Manifesto. Visit our website or email us for further details.