The Animal Turn

Guests Laura Fernández, Amanda Weiss, and Siobhan Speiran join Claudia to discuss case studies as wide ranging as Japanese animal cafes, Spanish bull fighting, and Costa Rican sanctuaries to unfurl the complex relations of social media and animals. Together they probe how social media packages animals as content, why that changes real lives, and where activism, policy, and platform design can push back. 

Date Recorded: 11 April 2025 

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We celebrate 100 episodes by asking how podcasting can teach, build community, and improve animal welfare across languages, disciplines, and daily routines. Guests Maria Carreras and Kate Acton share concrete changes, strategic insights, and challenges that reshape how we listen to animals and to each other.

Date Recorded: 11 April 2025

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Gaming is one of the most consumed forms of media globally making it an important space from to explore human-animal relations. In this episode, media scholars Michael Rübsamen, Osvaldo Cleger, and Keung Yoon Bae discuss the interconnections of gaming, representation, and identity and what the significance of this might be for considerations of animals. 

Date Recorded: 3 February 2025 

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In this episode we animals, power, and popular media. Emily Major, Debra Merskin, and Lu Liu help to think through how animals are manufactured as “pests” and “icons” in media and how those labels shape empathy, policy, and everyday cruelty towards animals. 

Date Recorded: 15 January 2025 

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In this episode we discuss how rhetorical constructions of animality, and humanity are mobilized to serve specific power structures, including white supremacy and colonialism. Lauren Corman, David Rooney, and S. Marek Muller come on the show to talk about some of the complex networks of media influence and consumption that shape such thought. 

 Date Recorded: 19 February 2025

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Carrie Freeman and Christopher Eubanks join Claudia on the show to explore animal (mis)representation in media. They examine some of the ways in which animals are represented in activist messaging and the interconnections of animal rights with other social justice movements.

Date Recorded: 29 February 2025 

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The Animal Turn podcast launches Season 8 with a dive into the intersections of media, racism, and speciesism. Tobias Linné, Ellen Gorsevski, and Natalie Khazaal join Claudia on the show to discuss how race and species intersect each other in animated film and the development of their Media Analysis of Racism and Speciesism (MARS) test to evaluate the ways in which they do. 

Date Recorded: 31 March 2025 

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Death permeates our relationships with animals, yet we rarely confront the complex ethical questions it raises. In this conversation with Katja Guenther and Julian Paul Keenan, editors of "When Animals Die," we delve into the emerging field of animal death studies - an interdisciplinary approach examining how animals experience and humans justify animal death. 

Date Recorded: 21 April 2025

 Katja M. Guenther is Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where her research and teaching focus on gender, feminist activism and social movements, human-animal relationships, and the state. He...

Thom Norman joins Claudia on the show to discuss the work of FarmKind and the tenets of effective altruism. They talk about FarmKind’s compassion calculator and how it strategically doesn’t include vegan messaging. They discuss the organizations FarmKind supports and some of the critiques levelled against effective altruism.  

Date Recorded: 20 March 2025

Thom Norman is the co-founder of FarmKind, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating the end of factory farming by expanding the coalition of people working to protect farmed animals. After a career as a nuclea...

In this crossover episode from The Deal With Animals Podcast, Marika S. Bell talks to two experts about the impacts of sensory pollution on animals. Sensory pollution from artificial light and noise has profound effects on wildlife behavior, reproduction, and survival. Brett Seymour and Jennifer Phillips share insights about how everyday choices impact everything from insect flight patterns to bird nesting success.

Date Released: 7 May 2024

Dr. Jennifer Phillips is an assistant professor at Washington State University. Jenny's research focuses on animal behavior communication and the...

The global big cat trade encompasses both legal and illegal networks, with South Africa standing as the world's largest exporter of big cats including both live animals and parts. Vanessa Amoroso from Four Paws International explains how captive breeding facilities create a "conveyor belt of cubs" that fuels tourism attractions while obscuring the darker reality of what happens to these animals. Together Claudia and Vanessa discuss how loopholes in CITES allows for the large-scale legal breeding and trade of big cats, which also has numerous slippages into the illegal trade of the animals and exacerbates their exploitation. 

Duration: 00:53:05

 Rashmi Singh Rana and Priyanshu Thapliyal join Claudia on the show to discuss some of the key themes to emerge in Season 7, Animals and Multispecies Health. These include thinking beyond anthropocentric understandings of health; considering how geography and context shape health relations; and the importance of discourse in both imaginative and material impacts.

Date Recorded: 29 January 2025 

Priyanshu Thapliyal is a PhD Researcher based in the school of GeoSciences at University of Edinburgh. In his project, he is thinking with and for people and street dogs living in an Indian Himalayan village to...

In this episode Jessica Pierce joins Claudia to explicitly discuss dogs’ health. They discuss everything from end-of-life care for dogs, to breeding practices, and discourses about dogs’ purpose in society. They unfurl some of the overlapping and similar health needs of street- versus pet-dogs and surmise that in general dogs are facing a range of both physical and psychological challenges.  

Date Recorded: 2 September 2024. 

Jessica Pierce is an American bioethicist known for her work in the field of animal ethics and the philosophy of human-animal relationships. She has written a number of books...

Matthew Adams joins Claudia on the show to talk about the dogs who were used by Ivan Pavlov in his extensive laboratory operations in St Petersburg. They discuss the importance of psychology and psychological experimentation in debates about multispecies health, also pointing to the importance of art-based research that challenges anthropocentricism. 

Recorded: 10 September 2024. 

Matthew Adams is an academic in the School of Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of Brighton, UK. He teaches classes in ecopsychology, the psychology of human-animal relations, posthumanities and creative methods. Mathew’s research challenges conventional perceptions of a...

In this episode we delve into how urban health histories can help us to understand changing multispecies health. Heeral Chhabra tells us how the welfare of free-roaming dogs in India was caught up with the colonial history of the country and how rabies saw drastic changes in human-dog relations. 

Date Recorded: 27 September 2024. 

 Heeral Chhabra is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the Remaking One Health: Decolonial Approaches to Street Dogs and Rabies Prevention in India Project at University of Liverpool. She was awarded PhD from the University of Delhi (2022) for her thesis Ani...

This episode dives into the principles of compassionate conservation, emphasizing the importance of recognizing individual lives and experiences in conservation efforts. Daniel Ramp outlines how traditional conservation often overlooks the welfare of specific animals, leading to harmful outcomes, and presents compelling arguments for integrating compassion into conservation policies and practices. 

Date Recorded: 1 November 2024. 

Daniel Ramp is a behavioural ecologist, welfare expert, and conservation biologist specializing in transdisciplinary approaches to coexistence and sustainability. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Compassionate Conservation at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), wh...

Join us for a conversation with Oswaldo Santos Baquero about marginalized multispecies collectives. He explains the complexities of biological taxonomy and challenges traditional definitions of species to instead think about how collectives operate. By critically analyzing health practices through the lens of multispecies marginalization, Oswaldo challenges us to reconsider the economic interests that often overshadow the well-being of both animals and humans. 

Date Recorded: 28 August 2024. 

Oswaldo Santos Baquero is a professor in the Department of Preventive Veterinary Medicine and Animal Health at the School of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Sã...

Anindita Bhadra joins Claudia on the show to explain what behavioural ecology is and how it has been applied to understanding the free-roaming dogs in India. They discuss the interconnections between domestication and evolution, the social organization of free roaming dogs, and dogs relationships with urban ecologies. 

Date Recorded: 16 August 2024. 

Anindita Bhadra is a behavioural biologist, working on free-ranging dogs in India. She founded The Dog Lab at the Department of Biological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata in June 2009. She has written about dogs in leading journals su...

In this episode Mariam Motamedi-Fraser joins us in the show to discuss ‘species story’ a concept she developed in her book Dog Politics. We discuss how the human-dog bond has been established and maintained through modern day practices and scientific discourses which have implications for how dogs can live. 

Date Recorded: 31 July 2024. 

Mariam Motamedi Fraser is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the interdisciplinary research group UCL Anthropocene, in the Department of Geography. Her research is located in the field of animal studies. She is particularly interested in the implications, for animal...

Gwendolyn Blue and Melanie Rock join Claudia on the show to discuss ‘healthy publics.’ They explore how the idea of ‘public health’ has persistently been conceived of as human and unpack some of the opportunities and challenges with conceiving of multispecies health. From the historical roots of the ‘One Health’ to the modern challenges of public participation and representation, Melanie and Gwendolyn offer thought-provoking perspectives on stretching health frameworks beyond humans. 

Date Recorded: 2 July 2024. 

Melanie Rock is a professor at the University of Calgary is in the Department of Community Health Sciences. Sinc...

Guillem Rubio-Ramon and Krithika Srinivasan join Claudia to kick of Season 7 which is focused on “multispecies health.” They discuss human-dog relations and how multispecies health involves components of care, indifference and violence. 

Date Recorded: 7 June 2024. 

Guillem Rubio-Ramonis a Research Associate in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh. His research integrates more-than-human geographies and political ecologies to study the reciprocal influence of animals and humans on each other's socio-cultural, economic and political lives. He is currently involved in the Remaking One Health – Indies project, which explores everyday interactions between...

Claudia talks to scientist and author, Alexandra Horowitz about dogs’ cognition. They discuss everything from dogs’ sense of smell and capacity to play to how anthropomorphisms sometimes skew human understandings of what dogs are doing. 

Date Recorded: 15 August 2024 

Alexandra Horowitz heads the Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College, where she also teaches seminars in canine cognition, creative nonfiction writing, and audio storytelling. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know and four other books, mo...

Monica Murphy and Bill Wasik join Claudia on the show to talk about their recent book Our Kindred Creatures. They discuss how the late 19th century was a time of immense change for Americans and their relationships with animals became increasingly contradictory. 

Date Recorded: 15 July 2024

Bill Wasik is the editorial director of The New York Times Magazine. Monica Murphy is a veterinarian and a writer. Their previous book, Rabid: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Diabolical Virus, was a Los Angeles Times...

Bonus: Animals in Media

Together with Arukah Animal International, The Animal Turn co-hosted a panel discussion focused on "Animals in Media". Using a video about animalized hierarchies in contagion films as a prompt, Claire Parkinson, Susan McHugh, and Tobias Linné engaged in an open-ended about media, representation, power, and activism.

Date Recorded: 22 May 2024

Claire Parkinson is Professor of Culture, Communication and Screen Studies and Co-director of the Centre for Human Animal Studies at Edge Hill University. Her publications include the books Popular Media and Animals (2011), Beyond Human: F...

Award-winning journalist Sandra Bartlett joins us to uncover the unsettling realities of fish farming in British Columbia with her impactful podcast, "The Salmon People." We discuss some of the social and environmental controversies surrounding salmon farming in Canada including the interconnections between wild and farmed salmon in the region, how sea lice have devastated marine populations, and the ways in which indigenous groups are resisting industry interests.  

Date Recorded: 8 May 2024

Sandra Bartlett is an award-winning journalist based in Toronto.  She worked as a producer and reporter in NP...

Using Carol Gigliotti’s book “The Creative Lives of Animals” as a backdrop,  this episode explores animals and the creative process.  From the artistic intricacies of humpback whales' bubble-net feeding to the sophisticated communication skills of prairie dogs, Carol guides us through a world where animals demonstrate remarkable creativity, highlighting how they make meaning for themselves.
 

Date Recorded: 6 March 2024

Carol Gigliotti is an author, artist, animal activist, and scholar whose work focuses on the reality of animals’ lives as important contributors to the biodiversity of this planet. She is Professo...

Using his book Through a Vet’s Eyes as a backdrop, Claudia talks to Sean Wensley about veterinary ethics and animal welfare. They discuss some of Sean’s experiences as a vet as well as some of the challenges vets face in representing animals’ interests.

Date Recorded: 20 February 2024

Sean Wensley is Senior Veterinarian for Animal Welfare and Professional Engagement at the UK veterinary charity, the People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA). He was President of the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and chaired the Animal Welfare Working Group of t...

Over the years Claudia has mentioned her PhD research and journey, in this episode Catherine Oliver takes over as host and interviews Claudia about her research. They dwell on the concept of problematization and why it is important for thinking politically about urban animals. 

Date Recorded: 3 October 2023 

Claudia (Towne) Hirtenfelder is an animal studies geographer and podcast producer and host. Claudia has a PhD in Geography from Queen’s University, and her research is focused on the significance of the problematization of urban animals. She is par...

In this ‘Grad Review’ Claudia talks to Virginia Thomas and Darren Chang, two early career researchers interested in animals and politics. Together they unpack synergies, tensions, and omissions that emerged in the 6th Season of The Animal Turn podcast. They discuss the multiple scales at which politics is practiced and can be considered, the crisis of imagination that potentially exists among the animal advocacy movement as well as some of the conceptual development being done by scholars that can create space for more just, multispecies futures.

Date Recorded: 15 December 2023. 

Darren Chang is a...

Claudia talks to Andrea Schapper about animals and international relations with an explicit focus on the United Nations. They discuss how animal rights are absent in the Sustainable Development Goals as well as the promise of the rights of nature framework being employed in Latin America. 

Date Recorded: 5 December 2023 

Andrea Schapper is a Professor in International Politics at the University of Stirling. In September and October 2022, she was a Guest Scholar at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights & Humanitarian Law in Lund, Sweden. She also...

Krithika Srinivasan joins Claudia on the show to talk about re-animalization, a concept that challenges the dominant ways in which human wellbeing are framed. Re-Animalization compels one to think about how development is predicated on logics of protection and sacrifice, expanding notions of longevity, and a reduction of risk. Re-Animalization offers an opportunity to shift our gaze to the most privileged and to consider how risks might be more evenly distributed. 

Date Recorded: 23 November 2023. 

Krithika Srinivasan is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the Univ...

Claudia talks to renowned photographer Jo-Anne McArthur about the power of images in political change for animals. They unpack what animal photojournalism is, some of the challenges photographers encounter in recording the lives of animals, and the political implications of such photos. 

Date Recorded: 17 October 2023. 

Jo-Anne McArthur is an award-winning photojournalist, sought-after speaker, photo editor, and the founder of We Animals Media. She has visited over sixty countries to document our complex relationship with animals. She is the author of three books: We Animals (2014), Captive (2017), and...

In this episode Claudia talks to Corey Lee Wrenn about two concepts that are central to her work in animal studies: social movement mobilization and feminism. They discuss veganism as a social movement as well as some of the ways in which feminism has been sidelined in animal rights’ debates. 

Date Recorded: 13 October 2023. 

Corey Lee Wrenn is Lecturer of Sociology with the School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research (SSPSSR) and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements at the Un...

Claudia talks to lawyer and philosopher Gary Francione about abolition. Gary provides an overview of how ideas related to animals have emerged and changed since the 19th century. This includes the emergence of animal welfare, animal rights, and abolitionism. Throughout the interview Gary asserts that animal welfare and animal rights will not achieve anything until there is a paradigm shift whereby animals are no longer understood as property, food, or things to use. 

Date Recorded: 5 October 2023. 

Gary Francione is a is a published author and freq...

In this episode Dinesh Wadiwel discusses how violence is an important concept in political theory. He outlines how violence can be intersubjective, structural, or epistemic. He delves into how violence and coercion are tools used to try and achieve domination and that there is a political imperative to call violence what it is. 

Date Recorded: 25 September 2023. 

Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel is Associate Professor in human rights and socio-legal studies at University of Sydney. He is author of Animals and Capital (Ediburgh UP, 2023), The War against Animals (Bril...

In this episode Steve Cooke discusses the significance of philosophy in helping to foster moral imagination. Such imagination allows for conceptual development, making moral progress and political change possible. With this backdrop, Steve unpacks how the development of habitat rights for animals would be an important step in ensuring animal vital interests are protected. 

Date Recorded: 7 September 2023. 

Steve Cooke is an Associate Professor of Political Theory at the University of Leicester. He works on justice and nonhuman animals, and in the ethics of protest and acti...

In this episode, Claudia talks to Angie Pepper about cosmopolitanism. Angie explains how despite cosmopolitans having an expansive view of justice, animals are rarely accounted for. They discuss the challenges of including animals in cosmopolitan thought and mull over what animals might be entitled to.

Date Recorded: 24 August 2023. 

Angie Pepper is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Roehampton in London. Angie's philosophical background is in contemporary political philosophy, applied ethics, normative ethics, and feminist philosophy, and her recent research focuses on what we...

Claudia launches Season 6 by talking to Will Kymlicka about politics. They discuss how animals remain largely sidelined in political philosophical thought, as compared to other areas of ethics and social theory. Will delves into three different models for how to bring animals into politics: politics “on behalf of” animals, where humans represent animals; politics “by” animals, where wild animals exercise self-government; and politics “with” animals, where humans and animals do politics together and co-author decisions. As examples of joint politics, they discuss recent efforts to share power with domesticated animals in farmed animal sanctuaries, in the family and in the workplac...

The Animal Turn has been shortlisted in two categories of the upcoming International Women's Awards to be held on the 6th of November 2023. You can hear the nominated clips in this episode. 

The Animal Turn was shortlisted in "Moment of Insight from a Role Model" for the conversation between Jeff Sebo and Claudia Hirtenfelder about the im/possibility of change in human-animal relations. 

It was also shortlisted in "Changing the World One Moment at a Time" for the conversation with Yamini Narayanan in which he outlines how devastating sacralisation is for women, children, and animals...

In this bonus episode Claudia talks to Captain Paul Watson about the concept of interference. They discuss his recent book Hitman for the Kindness Club as well as how he uses strategies of “aggressive nonviolence” to combat what he calls “the economics of extinction.” They also touch on the destructiveness of the fishing industry and factory farming for the oceans and the future of the planet. 

Date Recorded: 3 October 2023. 

Captain Paul Watson is a marine wildlife conservation and environmental activist. Paul was one of the founding members and director...

In this episode Claudia talks to public health expert Hope Ferdowsian about Phoenix Zones, a concept that captures places and practices that advance the rights, health, and well-being of people, animals, and our shared environments. They discuss how crises present opportunities for change as well as how humans and animal who have experienced trauma show capacities for resilience when they are afforded with liberty, autonomy, and dignity. 

Date Recorded: 21 September 2023. 

Hope Ferdowsian is a professor of medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and...

Podcaster and philosopher Josh Milburn is on the Animal Turn to talk about his latest book and how the concept of justice is central to imagining a future world in which the rights of animals are respected. Claudia and Josh discuss the political turn in animal ethics, some of the tensions between animal rights and veganism, as well as the role cellular agriculture might play in a future zoopolitical world. 

Date Recorded: 6 July 2023. 

Josh Milburn is a Lecturer in Political Philosophy in the division of International Relations, Poli...

Yamini Narayanan is back on the show, this time to talk to Claudia about her book Mother Cow, Mother India. They focus their discussion on the concept of “Mother” and what it means for cows in India. They touch on the implications of cows being sacralised as mothers of the Hindu nation and what cows’ daily lives, as mothers, are like. 

Date Recorded: 25 April 2023. 

Yamini Narayanan is an Associate Professor of International and Community Development at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her new book Mother Cow, Mother India explores the nexus...

In this bonus episode Claudia talks to Danielle Clode about her recent book on koalas. They talk about koalas’ incredible bodies and some of their social dynamics, including koalas unique digestive and reproductive systems and their long-distance bellows. 

Date Recorded: 10 April 2023. 

Danielle Clode is a biologist and natural history author based at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Danielle grew up in the fishing town of Port Lincoln in South Australia before sailing around the coast with her parents on a boat known as ‘the pirate ship’. After finishing...

Claudia discusses wonder with Jules Howard, author of the book Wonderdog. Using his book a backdrop, they discuss how dogs have influenced (and been influenced) by science. Topics include everything from evolution, to love and responsibility. Ultimately they marvel at how much there is we still don’t know about the creatures we share the world with. 

Date Recorded: 31 March 2023. 

Jules Howard is a UK-based zoological correspondent, science writer and broadcaster who writes for the Guardian, BBC Wildlife and Science Focus. His latest book ‘Wonderdog The Science of Dogs...

In this bonus episode Claudia talks to Carol Kline and Jes Hooper about why it is important to think about animals in relation to tourism. They touch on some of the ways animals are included in tourism and how to guard against unwittingly contributing to animal suffering. A key feature of this episode is giving an overview of the Emerging Voices for Animals in Tourism Conference. 

Date Recorded: 27 January 2023. 

Carol Kline is a Professor and the Director of the Hospitality and Tourism Management program at Appalachian State Univ...

In this final episode of the season Claudia talks to Amanda Bunten-Walberg and Oliver French, two fellow graduate students with interests in biosecurity. They delve into some the core themes in the season (including questions about scale, reproduction, and power) as well as some of the difficulties for thinking about biosecurity and animals. 

Date Recorded: 27 January 2023

Amanda (Mandy) Bunten-Walberg (she/ her) is a PhD Candidate at Queen's University's School of Environmental Studies. Her research explores more-than-human ethics in contagious contexts through the case study of bats and COV...

In this episode Claudia speaks to Nina Jamal about One Health. They discuss the changing definition of One Health and its significance for biosecurity and animals. They spend time thinking through the challenges and opportunities, particularly at the level of national and international policy. 

Date Recorded: 1 December 2022

Nina Jamal is leading FOUR PAWS’ efforts on Pandemics & Animal Welfare and campaign strategies. Before taking on that role and since 2013, Nina led the International Campaigns on Farm Animals and Nutrition Campaigns. Nina has also worked in the climate movement on in...

Claudia talks to Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka about community led conservation. They discuss her work with gorillas in Bwindi National Park and how helping them involves working together with the community through health initiatives, efforts to create better livelihoods, and paying attention to food security.  

Date Recorded: 23 November 2022

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is Founder and CEO of Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), an award-winning NGO that protects endangered gorillas and other wildlife through One Health approaches. After graduating from the Royal Veterinary College, University of London, in 1996, she established Uganda Wil...

In this episode Claudia chats to Chi Mao Wang about “the politics of domestication” which involves talking about the global-agri food industry, the meatification of diets in east Asia, and how this has resulted in increasing biosecurity measures in Taiwan. This leads them to a discussion about the westernization of domestication and the significance of decoupling the eating of meat from ideas of civilization. 

Date Recorded: 4 November 2022

Chi-Mao Wang is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Bio-Industry Communication and Development, National Taiwan University. His research interests include...

Claudia talks to Camille Labchuk about the two recent legal cases at Smithfield and Excelsior which involved animal activism on pig farms in North America. They discuss how biosecurity is used as a means of creating ag-gag laws, the relative absence of biosecurity considerations in the cases, and the legal exceptionalism animal farms enjoy in Canada. 

Date Recorded: 27 October 2022

Camille Labchuk is an animal rights lawyer and executive director of Animal Justice—Canada’s only animal law advocacy organization. Under her leadership, Animal Justice fights legal cases in cour...

Claudia talks to Thomas Hartung about animal testing in pharmacology and toxicology. They discuss how animal testing involves a weighing of values as well as some of the disruptive technologies that are providing alternatives to animal testing – including stem cell technologies and artificial intelligence.  

Date Recorded: 5 October 2022

Thomas Hartung, MD PhD, is the Doerenkamp-Zbinden-Chair for Evidence-based Toxicology in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, with a joint appointment at the Whiting School of Engineering. He also...

Claudia talks to Christos Lynteris, an anthropologist with a long history of researching some of the interconnections between animals and disease. In this episode they focus on rats and the third plague pandemic highlighting how rats went from being understood as in relation to others to being cemented as a vilified species in the spread of disease.   

Date Recorded: 29 September 2022

Christos Lynteris is Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on the anthropological and historical examination of epidemics and has pioneered the...

Claudia talks to Lauren van Patter about the concepts of feral and invasive species. They touch on the differences between the two concepts and consider how issues of colonization, reproduction, and human control lead to the categorization of some animals as biosecurity threats. 

Date Recorded: 21 September 2022

Dr. Lauren Van Patter is the Kim & Stu Lang Professor in Community and Shelter Medicine in the Department of Clinical Studies at the Ontario Veterinary College, University of Guelph. Lauren is an interdisciplinary animal studies researcher with a background in Environmental Sci...

In this episode Claudia talks to Jeff Sebo about bioethics and how it straddles both health and environmental ethics. They touch on some of the grounding principles of bioethics and how these principles frequently neglect to account for animals. They further discuss why a consideration of animals is necessary to achieve health and environmental justice.

Date Recorded: 16 August 2022

Jeff Sebo is Clinical Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Animal Studies M.A. Program, Director of the Mi...

Claudia launches season 5 of The Animal Turn with a conversation on biosecurity with Steve Hinchliffe, a renowned geographer. They discuss how biosecurity is centered on the idea of keeping life safe and how this often operates through spatial logics of trying to keep threats out. They touch on how animals are often blamed for biosecurity threats, questions about whose lives are kept safe, and the various walling work that is done under the banner of biosecurity. 

Date Recorded: 21 September 2022

Steve Hinchliffe is Professor of Human Geography at the...

In this bonus episode Claudia talks to Jamie Woodhouse about his podcast Sentientism. Most of the episode is concerned with sentientism as a concept and they talk about some of the tensions and opportunities guests on Jamie’s show have flagged. 

Date Recorded: 26 September 2022

Jamie Woodhouse is working to develop Sentientism (“evidence, reason and compassion for all sentient beings”) as a worldview and as a global movement. He hosts the Sentientism Podcast and YouTube and has published articles and presented academic seminars on the Sentientism philosophy and its impli...

In this bonus episode Claudia talks to Alice Crary and Lori Gruen about their recent book “Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory.” They touch on what inspired the book and spend most of the conversation focused on what “Critical Animal Theory” means. It is a timely and theoretically dense conversation.

Date Recorded: 1 August 2022

Alice Crary is University Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the New School, where she is a co-founder and steering committee member of the Collaborative for Climate Futures. She was previously Chair of Philosophy at the New Schoo...

Just a quick "episode" to give you an update on what's been happening with The Animal Turn: 

1) Season 5 of Biosecurity will be launched in October
2) In the meantime you can look forward to some bonus content coming your way
3) If you would like to get involved in the Animal Turn (unfortunately there is no pay) feel free to email Claudia (info@theanimalturn.com)

In this final episode of Season 4 two graduate students, Hannah Hunter and Bailey Hilgren, chat with Claudia about some of the core themes and tensions to emerge from the season. This includes a focus on sound methodologies, such as issues with how we collect animal sounds to how (or even indeed whether) there is something special about sound in trying to understand the lives of animals.   

Date Recorded: 2 May 2022

Bailey Hilgren is a musicologist and sound studies scholar about to begin a PhD in ethnomusicology at New York...

Claudia talks to conservationist and ecologist Gloriana Chaverri about the numerous and diverse ways in which bats communicate. This bonus episode deviates from the usual focus on concepts to a more sustained focus on this large order of animals 

Date Recorded: 29 March 2022

Gloriana Chaverri is an Associate Professor at the Golfito campus of the University of Costa Rica. She is also a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Her research with bats first focused on the topic of mating systems and social organization, and her pas...

Claudia talks to Denise Herzing about her decades of fieldwork with Atlantic Spotted Dolphins in the Bahamas. They touch on some of what she has learnt about dolphins in the wild and the ways in which they communicate using sound. They also talk about the significance and challenges of doing extended field studies. 

Date Recorded: 23 March 2022

Denise Herzing is the Founder and Research Director of the Wild Dolphin Project. Denise has spent decades working with Atlantic spotted dolphins in Bahamian waters. She has a B.S. in Mar...

In this episode Claudia chats to Rachel Mundy about the concept “Sonic Specimen” they talk about the historical categorisation of sound illustrates some of the ways in which humans and animals have been hierarchically thought of. They touch on how this has shaped and is shaped by the institutional production of knowledge also hinting at the usefulness of related concepts like “animanities” and “translation”. 

Date Recorded: 10 March 2022

Rachel Mundy is an Associate Professor of Music in the Arts, Culture and Media Program at Rutgers University. She is primarily conce...

Claudia talks to Jeremy Gordon about the concept “Republic of Noise”. They discuss the relationship between noise and politics and think through how noise might be used as a tool that enables listening and democracy. They “riff” with each other trying to think through the tensions between noise and harmony as well as whose sounds are considered pleasant or not and how that shapes how one belongs to place.  

Date Recorded: 9 February 2022

Jeremy Gordon is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at Gonzaga University who studies and teaches whe...

Claudia talks to Eva Meijer about voice as a concept that helps us to think about animal sounds and practices in a more politicised way. Eva touches on how a broader conception of politics and voice allows for a more nuanced actions in response to animals and the lives they are trying to lead. They also touch on the usefulness of a variety of languages, mediums, and disciplines in becoming proficient in listening to animals. 

Date Recorded: 25 January 2022

Eva Meijer is a philosopher and writer. Meijer works a...

In this episode Claudia talks to musicologist Martin Ullrich about animals and music. Together they touch on the multiple ways in which music and animals intersect from how animals inspire human music, to how animals make and listen to music, and the ethics of more-than-human musical encounters. They find that the focus on animals and music destabilizes anthropocentric understandings of both culture and aesthetics.

Date Recorded: 15 December 2021

Martin Ullrich studied piano in Frankfurt and Berlin as well as music theory in Berlin too. He received his PhD in...

In this episode Claudia talks to Cheryl Tipp about sound archives, how they are managed and the ways in which animal studies scholars might use them in trying to research animals. Together they think about why some sounds are included in national archives more than others as well as how recordings of nature and animal voices are valued. 

Date Recorded: 1 December 2021

Cheryl Tipp is the British Library’s Curator of Wildlife & Environmental Sounds. With a background in zoology and library services, Cheryl has spent the past 16 year...

In this episode Claudia continues the focus on methodology as it relates to animals and sound. This time Mickey Vallee joins The Animal Turn to talk about the concept of bioacoustics and how using bioacoustics methods alters the ways researchers relate to their research subjects – who are often animals. They discuss some of the theory and ideas circulating bioacoustics generally and Mickey’s experiences more specifically. 

 
Date Recorded: 26 October 2021

 
Mickey Vallee is an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies at Athabasca University in Alberta, where he also holds the Canada Researc...

In this episode Claudia talks to Jonathan Prior about sonic methods and together they try to explore the ways in which methods such as recording, sound walking, and listening could help animal studies scholars better understand and appreciate the animals and worlds they are most concerned with. 

Date Recorded: 12 October 2021

Dr Jonathan Prior is a lecturer in Human Geography at Cardiff University, Wales. His research and publications take an interdisciplinary approach, spanning environmental philosophy, sound studies, and landscape research. His first book, Between Nature and Culture: The Aes...

In this first episode of season 4, Claudia speaks to Bryan Pijanowski about soundscapes and sound ecology. They discuss what soundscapes are, how to study them and why thinking about sound might help scholars to think more deeply about animals and their environments.  

Date Recorded: 7 October 2021

Dr. Bryan C Pijanowski is Professor and University Faculty Scholar in the Department of Forestry and Natural Resources at Purdue University. His work focusses on the use of sounds to study nature and how humans perceive their environment through their senses, especially thr...

Animals are increasingly at the forefront of research questions – not as shadows to human stories, or as beings we want to understand biologically, or for purely our benefit – but as beings who have histories, stories, and geographies of their own. PhD Candidate Claudia Hirtenfelder talks to animal studies scholars about some of the most important ideas emerging out of this recent turn.

Each season is set around a particular theme so that the ways in which these different concepts hang together (or not) become more apparent, allowing for deeper reflection and consideration not only about anim...

Claudia reviews Season 3 with Shubhangi Srivastava and Anmol Chowdhury, currently PhD Candidates in the ERC funded project titled Urban Ecologies. Together they talk about some of the gaps in the season, primarily discussions about methods, and they delve into some of the overlapping themes in the season including management, entanglement, power, and aesthetics.  

Date recorded: 25 August 2021

Shubhangi Srivastava is currently a doctoral research scholar with the ERC Grant project, Urban Ecologies, at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bangalore. Her doctoral research is centred around studying the...

Claudia speaks to Michelle Westerlaken about the concept of Re-Design and how design can be used to generate multispecies worlds and opportunities. They discuss Michelle’s background in design with and for animals, how she finds theory incredibly important for design processes, and the ways in which trying to create positive urban design might generate new multispecies opportunities. 

Date recorded: 26 April 2021

Michelle Westerlaken is a Research Associate on the Smart Forests project in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. She has a PhD in Inter...

In this episode Claudia speaks to Philip Howell about urban animal history. Together they discuss the significance of geography in prying apart the many histories of animals, how attention to animal stories gives one a better appreciation for ‘the urban’ and challenges humanist ideas of history. They also touch on the stimulating experience of searching for, finding, and trying to understand animals in the archives.  

Date recorded: 20 April 2021

Philip Howell is a lecturer in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is an histori...

Claudia talks to Marcus Baynes-Rock about his work with urban hyenas in Harar, Ethiopia. They discuss how these animals navigate the urban and then delve into the concept of ‘multispecies commons’. In many ways, they workshop the concept in the episode trying to unpack how it is useful as both a theoretical and methodological tool. 

Date recorded: 5 April 2021

Marcus Baynes-Rock is an anthropologist who studies the interfaces between humans and animals. His book Among the Bone Eaters tracks his experiences following urban hyenas in the town of Harar...

Claudia talks to Yamini Narayanan about the concept of informality and how it can be used to unpack, complicate and understand urban-animal relations. With a focus on urban-cow entanglements, they discuss how informality is related to urban infrastructure and mobilities that help to bur some of the often dichotomous ways we’ve come to understand not only intra-human relations, but inter-species relations too.

Date recorded: 28 April 2021

Yamini Narayanan is Senior Lecturer in International and Community Development at Deakin University, Melbourne. Her work explores the ways in which (other) animals are instrumentalised in sectarian, ca...

Metabolism is an increasingly important concept in understanding how cities operate. Claudia chats with Catherine Oliver about the concept of urban metabolism and its usefulness in understanding the multiple scales of multispecies relations that are produced in and through urban living.

Date recorded: 3 May 2021

Catherine Oliver is a postdoctoral researcher, currently working on the ERC-funded project Urban Ecologies at the University of Cambridge, where she is researching urban backyard chickens and chicken-keepers in London. Her monograph, Veganism, Animals, and Archives is forthcoming with Routledge (August 2021). She is also a Wiley-Royal Geographical...

Claudia talks to Krithika Srinivasan about the concept of biopolitics and how it could be used to understand multi-species urban relations. They touch on the tensions between harm and welfare as well as how different socio-biological tactics are enforced in the name of urban development. 

Date recorded: 31 March 2021

Krithika Srinivasan’s research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political ecology, post-development politics, animal studies, and nature geographies. Her work draws on research in South Asia to rethink globally established concepts and practices about nature-society relations. Throu...

Claudia chats with Paula Arcari about the animals and how animals are rendered invisible in the urban – not only materially but epistemically and ethically too. They grapple with which animals are considered in the celebration of multispecies urban entanglements, and which are not.

Date recorded: 29 March 2021

Paula Arcari is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow within the Centre for Human Animal Studies at Edge Hill University, UK. Her three-year project ‘The Visual Consumption of Animals: Challenging Persistent Binaries’ aims to support transformational change in the way humans conceive...

In this episode Claudia talks to Nicholas Delon about ‘pervasive captivity’. Moving beyond a conception of captivity as only including those ‘behind bars’, they explore the many ways in which ‘the urban’ might operate to make animals captive by limiting their mobility and autonomy. 

Date recorded: 15 March 2021

Nicolas Delon is Assistant Professor or philosophy and environmental studies at New College of Florida. He specializes in animal ethics, with particular interests in moral status and animal agency. He has published on these topics as well as the ethics of killing anim...

In this episode Claudia speaks to Marie Carmen Shingne about the concept ‘Right to the City’ and how it could be applied to animals. They open up this season, focusing on animals and the urban, by asking whether animals have any claims to the city. 

Date recorded: 1 March 2021

Marie Carmen Shingne is a doctoral candidate in the Sociology Department at Michigan State University with specializations in animal studies and global urban studies. Her dissertation research is focused on the experiences of the slum residents and street dogs in the...

Animals are increasingly at the forefront of research questions – not as shadows to human stories, or as beings we want to understand biologically, or for purely our benefit – but as beings who have histories, stories, and geographies of their own. PhD Candidate Claudia Hirtenfelder talks to animal studies scholars about some of the most important ideas emerging out of this recent turn.

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Each season is set around a particular theme so that the ways in which these different concepts hang together (or not) become more apparent, allowing for deeper reflection and consideration not only about animal...

In this final episode of Season 2, Claudia talks to Joshua Jones, Siobhan Speiran, and Pablo Perez Castello about the theme of Animals and Experience. Together they unpack some of the overarching ideas to emerge in episodes 1 to 9 (such as relationality, imagination, meaning, and beauty) and highlight areas that could be explored more in future. 

Date recorded: 4 January 2021

Siobhan Speiran is a PhD candidate in Environmental Studies at Queen’s, working with Dr. Alice Hovorka and The Lives of Animals Research Group. Her research is funded by a...

This episode explores a concept that works to highlight the experiences of animals caught up in human systems that oppress animals. Claudia talks to pattrice jones about how animals’ experiences (particularly those of chickens) compare in factory farms versus at VINE Sanctuary. They discuss the significance of talking about not only animals’ victimisation but also but their agency and will to survive. 

Date recorded: 29 December 2020

pattrice jones is a co-founder of VINE Sanctuary, an LGBTQ-led farmed animal refuge that works for social and environmental justice as well as animal libera...

Claudia talks to Jonathan Balcombe about fishes and their varied and incredible experiences. Using the concept of ‘shoalmates’ as a launch pad, they discuss some of the intra- and inter-species relations fishes engage in from work to cuddle and play. 

Date recorded: 30 November 2020

Jonathan Balcombe is a biologist with a PhD in ethology, the study of animal behavior. His books include Pleasurable Kingdom, Second Nature, The Exultant Ark, and What a Fish Knows—a New York Times best-seller now available in fifteen languages. His next book for grown-ups...

After unpacking what constitutes a multispecies community, Sue Donaldson explains why it is important to consider how politics works to make sure that animals’ experiences, and what they are asking for, are heard. 

Date recorded: 18 November 2020

Sue Donaldson is a writer and animal advocate. She is a research associate in the Dept. of Philosophy at Queen's University, Kingston, and co-convenor of the Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics research group. She is the author of 4 books, and dozens of articles, primarily focusing on animal rights and polit...

Claudia speaks to Lauren Corman about interspecies subjectivity unpacking what subjectivity itself could mean and why it is so important to consider how it is shaped by species. They reflect on threads scholars need to hold in tension when trying to understand experience and using such theoretically dense concepts.

Recorded: 6 November 2020

Dr. Lauren Corman is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Brock University. Hired as the first professor to specialize in critical animal studies, Lauren teaches about animals and contemporary social theory. Lauren previously hosted the Animal Voices radio show, an...

Claudia chats with Kathryn Gillespie about the ways in which the geography in general and the concept of intimate geography in particular aid in generating knowledge about animals’ experiences.  The concept is both theoretically and methodologically rich allowing for focus not only on animals’ experiences but how researchers’ relations with, proximity to, and understanding of animals’ bodies and lives alters the way we come to know said experience.  

Date recorded: 29 September 2020

Kathryn Gillespie is a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Kentucky in Geography and the Applied Environmenta...

Claudia talks to Jeffrey Bussolini, a phenomenologist with a keen interest in feline experiences, about how art and aesthetics can provide a novel way of exploring and reconceptualising animals’ experiences.  

Date recorded: 16 September 2020

Jeffrey Bussolini is Co-Director of the Center for Feline Studies and the Avenue B Multi-Studies Center, and associate professor at the City University of New York.  He studied at Georgetown University, CUNY, the Sorbonne (Paris 1), and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Since 1995 he and colleagues have researched the phenomenological dimensions of feline a...

Claudia talks to well-known author Carl Safina about ‘animal culture’ and how culture is a crucial part of how some animals come to understand and experience the world. They chat about the incredible ways culture manifests in animals’ experiences and touch on what a serious consideration of animal culture could mean for conservation efforts. 

Date recorded: 25 August 2020

Carl Safina grew up raising pigeons, training hawks and owls, and spending as many days and nights in the woods and on the water as he could. He is known for hisly...

In this episode, Claudia talks to Marc Bekoff about the field of ‘cognitive ethology’ and how researchers can better learn about animals through attentively watching them and taking seriously their personal experiences. They touch on some of the tensions of how you can ‘know’ other animals’ experiences through and why taking the time to understand their worlds is so important.  

Date recorded: 14 August 2020

Marc Bekoff is professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has published 31 books, won many awards for his researc...

S2E1: Phenomenology with Zipporah Weisberg

In the first episode of Season 2, which is focusing on ‘Animals and Experience’, Claudia speaks to independent scholar Zipporah Weisberg about the concept ‘Phenomenology’. They touch on the potential of phenomenology as a concept and a practice for better understanding the lives and experiences of animals, also contemplating some of the tensions that are embedded therein. 

Date recorded: 12 August 2020

Zipporah Weisberg is an Independent Scholar, animal activist, and contemporary dancer currently living in Granada, Spain. Her areas of speciali...

In this final episode of Season 1, Claudia talks to Paulina Siemieniec and Hira Jaleel about the theme of Animals and the Law. Together they unpack some of the overarching ideas to emerge in episodes 1 to 9 and highlight areas that could be explored more in future. 

Date recorded: 7 July 2020

Guests: Hira Jaleel is a lawyer based out of Pakistan. Hira has recently graduated with an LLM in Animal Law from Lewis & Clark Law School on a Fulbright scholarship. Hira’s LLM thesis – titled “Wildlife Protection in Pakistan – An Overview of Statutory...

Claudia talks to Valéry Giroux about liberty and how it relates to animals and the law. Valéry unpacks some of the debates and tensions that arise when thinking about liberty, the different types of liberty there are and also how she envisions the law could better serve animals’ freedom by acknowledging them as persons with rights. 

Date recorded: 26 June 2020

Guest: Valéry Giroux has an academic training in law and is a doctor in philosophy. She is one of the two coordinators of the Center for research in ethics (a Queb...

Claudia talks to Frédéric Côté-Boudreau about autonomy and how it relates to animals. They highlight some of the tensions with considering animals as beings who might want to make their own choices and touch on what this could mean for the law and the ways in which our societies are structured.

Date recorded: 11 June 2020

Guest: Frédéric is a philosophy scholar who earned his PhD at Queen’s University in 2019 with a thesis entitled Inclusive Autonomy: A Theory of Freedom for Everyone. He is based in Montréal...

Claudia speaks to Saskia Stucki, who sees overlaps between International Humanitarian Law and Animal Welfare Law as providing fertile ground for legal conceptual development. Saskia Stucki believes ‘Animal Warfare Law’ offers a way forward for considering how animal welfare and animal rights could better complement one another. 

Date recorded: 6 May 2020

Guest: Saskia Stucki is Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg, Germany. In 2018/2019, she was a visiting researcher at the Harvard Law School Animal Law & Policy Program, where she worked on her t...

Claudia speaks to Siobhan O’Sullivan about Ag-Gag laws with a particular focus on how they are manifesting in Australia. They also touch on some of the tensions that exist between animal welfare and issues of visibility. 

Date recorded: 30 April 2020

Guest: Dr. Siobhan O’Sullivan is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She has interests in animal welfare policy and environmental ethics, and is the author of three books, including: Getting Welfare to Work (2015) and Animals, Equality and Democracy (2011). Siobhan is also well known for h...

Charlotte Blattner discusses how international law, specifically Extraterritorial Jurisdiction, might provide a useful and productive way in which to build legal protections for animals. 

Date recorded: 10 April 2020

Guest: Charlotte E. Blattner is a senior researcher and lecturer at the Institute for Public Law, University of Bern. She earned her PhD in international law and animal law from the University of Basel, Switzerland, as part of the doctoral program Law and Animals. From 2017-2018, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Philosophy at Queen’s University, Canada, working on animal labour as part of Animals in...

In this episode Maneesha Deckha explains the legal concept of personhood, why animal advocates are trying to include animals within the category and the potential of a different concept, ‘Legal Beingness’, to side-step some of the challenges of Personhood as a concept. 

Date recorded: 2 April 2020

Guest: Maneesha Deckha is Professor and Lansdowne Chair in Law at the University of Victoria. Her research interests include critical animal studies, animal law and legalities, postcolonial feminist theory, and reproductive law. She is widely published and has received multiple grants from the Social Sciences and Human...

In this episode Claudia talks to Angela Fernandez about the legal concept of ‘First Possession’ also delving into the significance of historical research in considering animals and the law. 

Guest: Angela Fernandez is a Professor at the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, cross-appointed to the Department of History. She is the author of a book-length study on Pierson v. Post, the famous first possession case often used to begin the study of American (and sometimes Canadian) property law: Pierson v. Post, the Hunt for the Fox: Law and Professionalization in American Legal Culture (New York...