Deadline: 01/-5/2-27
Contact: Savannah DiGregorio
Email: savannah.digregorio@asu.edu
Animal Studies Across Disciplines Symposium
April 7th-April 9th 2027
Arizona State University
Many scholars argue that we are now living in a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—a name chosen to encapsulate an irreversibly transformed planet due to the rapid expansion of human populations, increasing exploitation of animals and natural resources, and pervasive pollution. The effects of the Anthropocene have been caused by only a small percentage of the world’s population, yet those living in the Global South disproportionately suffer the consequences. The Anthropocene, then, is just as much a social problem as it is an environmental issue.
Despite the centrality of animals to planetary health, however, nonhuman life often remains peripheral to discussions of climate and environmental sustainability, even as industrial agriculture drives deforestation and carbon emissions, species extinction destabilizes ecosystems, and the increasing emergence of zoonotic diseases—Covid-19 and Hantavirus among them—reveals the profound interdependence of human, animal, and environmental health. At the same time, dominant responses to environmental crises, which made possible the conditions of crisis in the first place, tend to privilege scientific discovery and technological innovation while neglecting the cultural narratives, entrenched biases, and networks of power that shape human-animal relationships.. To that end, imagining more just and hospitable futures requires new interdisciplinary approaches that recognize animals and interspecies relations as critical to collective flourishing and environmental sustainability.
The Animal Studies Across Disciplines Symposium will bring together scholars, artists, students, animal professionals, and community members across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to discuss animals and multispecies futures. The symposium is designed not only as a scholarly gathering, but as the start of a long-term collaborative network capable of shaping future research, public humanities work, community partnerships, and environmental dialogue.
The inaugural Spring 2027 Symposium will center on the keyword “care,” inviting participants to analyze how different disciplines, professions, and communities define and mobilize care in relation to animals, multispecies justice, and environmental stewardship. In doing so, the Symposium will evaluate practices of protection and responsibility alongside the violences and inequalities that shape life across species. For example, how might a humanities scholar, veterinarian, ecologist, or activist understand and practice care differently, and what might each learn from the knowledge, methods, and questions of the others? How might regional, place-based, and communal forms of knowledge offer different ways of understanding our relationships and responsibilities to animals? How is care negotiated when the welfare of an individual animal comes into conflict with the preservation of a population, species, or ecosystem? What might care mean for animals such as insects, whose small size, vast numbers, and frequent classification as pests or disease vectors complicate familiar practices of care? How do animals care for themselves, one another, and members of other species, and what might these practices teach us about caring for each other and the more-than-human world? The Symposium invites participants to consider what becomes possible when different ways of knowing and relating to animals are brought into conversation, and how such exchanges might expand our understanding and practice of care across species.
Possible topics include:
Regional approaches to Animal Studies and human-animal relations (e.g. desert ecologies, southern studies, the arctic, etc.)
Global and transnational approaches to Animal Studies and human-animal relations
Indigenous Animal Studies
Discussions of the field: Animal studies, Critical animal studies, Animality studies, Human-animal studies
Animals and climate change
Multispecies justice
Animal behavior, cognition, and welfare science
The politics of classifications like endangered, invasive, feral, native, or wild
Wildlife conservation, extinction, de-extinction, cloning, and biodiversity
Wildlife management, human-wildlife coexistence
Animal-assisted interventions
Human-animal bond
Animals, technology, and society
Animals and science
Studies of race and species
The race turn in Animal Studies
Humanism and Animal Studies
Animals and religion
Animal Studies and disability studies
Queer theory
Animals in literature, art, media, and popular culture
Animals and art history
Animals and philosophy
Animals who create art or songs
Creative works about animals
Animal actors
Animal ethics, law, policy
Animal advocacy and activism
Agriculture, food systems, and animal labor
Companion animals and multispecies families
Zoos and animal sanctuaries
Training and sports
Animal welfare, care, rescue, and rehabilitation
Animals, urbanization, and the built environment
Animal histories and histories of human-animal relations
Multispecies methods, ethnography, and fieldwork
Veterinary medicine, animal heath, and the Veterinary Humanities
One Health
Aging animals and hospice care
Community-based and collaborative approaches to Animal Studies
Animals and gender or sexuality
Documentary film or photography
Animals and social media
Animals and AI
Animal-Computer-Interaction (ACI)
Canine or other animal profiling
Animals and police brutality
Teaching Animal Studies, experiential or applied learning, and place-based pedagogy
Individual proposals or fully formed panel proposals of scholarly research, creative work, professional practice, community or activist work should be submitted by January 5th, 2027 to Dr. Savannah DiGregorio at savannah.digregorio@asu.edu. Early career and emerging scholars, as well as graduate and undergraduate students are especially encouraged to submit. Awards will be presented for outstanding graduate and undergraduate research.
Participants will be notified of their acceptance by January 19th, 2027. The symposium will be held at ASU’s Polytechnic campus with limited opportunities for online presentations. Proposals should specify whether participant(s) can attend in person.
Individual Proposals:
Please include a 150-word bio and 250-word abstract for a 15-minute presentation.
Panel Proposals:
Panels of 3-4 participants at 15 minutes per presentation. Please include a 300-350 word panel abstract, a 150-word bio, and a 250-word abstract for each presentation on the panel.
Posted on September 25, 2026
