Animal geographies

The animal geographies research concerns the relations between humans and non-human animals. We call into questions the conventional place of animals in cultural and geographical studies and push towards manner of study in which the supposed contrast between human and beast is undermined. We seek to reconstruct animal geographies as heterogeneously constituted by complex networks and assemblages of agents and actors, both human and not. We explore this more complicated relationship where animals can be placed along a broad range between nature and culture in various geographical locations and historical settings.

Research projects

Research projects currently being undertaken on this theme include:

	Beastly St. Petersburg: humans and other animals in imperial Russia Late Imperial St. Petersburg harboured an animal population that worked to support its growth and operation but also kept the city teetering precariously on the brink of a potential devolution into the noisy, smelly chaos of village life. This project will investigate the spatial patterns involved in 'civilising' this animal population to accommodate and support the city's conflicted or - using Fedor Dostoyevsky's term - 'distracted' modernisation.
	Ghost Species: Geographies of Absence and Extinction What does it mean to be a 'ghost species'? This project explores the idea that there is a spectre haunting conservation policies in the twenty-first century: the spectre of absence. Drawing on the recent 'spectral turn' in the humanities and social sciences, this project brings something new to debates about extinction, de-extinction, and restoration.
	Social Relations between Humans and Other Animals in Victorian Britain This project is conceived as a contribution to the 'animal turn' in Geography: that is, a reconsideration of the intertwined geographies of humans and animal relations. This project concerns a particular aspect of human-animal relations: the development of practices of pet keeping in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Marginal as pet keeping might seem to the great narratives of social and political development in the modern era, its history and geography can be used to analyse the nature of the modern city and modern society. The project will assert the significance of these affective and material relations, to explore their significance and their ramifications down to our own day.