Public Animal Geographies
‘Animals have been so indispensable to the structure of human affairs and so tied up with our visions of progress and the good life that we have been unable to (even try to) fully see them’
Wolch and Emel, 1995, Animal Geographies, xi
Animals have a long and rich history as part of the geographical discipline, dating back at least as far as Marion Newbigin’s 1913 work, Animal Geography. The place of animals in the discipline has changed and been reconfigured multiple times in the last century. Most recently, animals have formed a significant part of the “more-than-human” turn in the discipline, now figuring prominently in many of geography’s established sub-disciplines. Throughout this history in the geographical discipline, animals have featured to greater and lesser extents in many sub-disciplines, with scholarship that has gone from strength to strength in cultural geographies, historical geographies, political geographies, urban geographies, and environmental geographies.
In 2023, the Animal Geographies Working Group was founded with the aim of creating a space for people who focus on animal perspectives and animal subjects as foundational to their work. As part of our remit, we aim to communicate and collaborate across and beyond geography, with academics and non-academics alike. Our website will serve as one space of communication and collaboration, inviting essays and contributions from a wide range of people to speak about their work and the broader implications of animal geographies beyond the academy.
Invitation
The Animal Geographies Working Group of the Royal Geographical Society was founded in 2023. The group brings together animal geographers online and in person and will showcase the strengths of animal geography’s contributions to scholarship, advocacy, and practice. In summer 2023, we will be launching our website and associated blog. We want to use our website as a space that bridges academic and public spheres, bringing accessible animal geographies work to a wide audience. We are now accepting submission ideas for essays for the website. We are interested in any topic related to animals, including but not limited to animals in/and:
social life
climate change
public health
politics/law
rescue/sanctuary
entertainment
food
medicine and pharmaceutical industry
The Public Animal Geographies Series invites people working with and for animals in academia, the public sector, the charity sector, and beyond to write an essay for the AGWG website. Essays should be no more than 1000 words long and can include up to 5 photographs/videos/sound clips. Please submit ideas to animalgeographiesrgs@gmail.com and one of the team will be in touch to discuss with you!
Our website, as it builds over the next few years, aims to marry our academic work on animal geographies with broader public interests in animals and the promotion of geography as a subject. The website will host member profiles, information about events, and a blog. The blog will offer a space for writing about animal geographies in an accessible format. We intend to attract on audience not only of academics but of a more general audience. Our initial focus of the blog in our launch year will be a series on ‘Public Animal Geographies’, inviting writing about the public-facing aspects of their research, whether this is intersections with policy, implications for how we understand society, or research that is simply interesting! We are interested in receiving essay ideas from anyone. Please read on for instructions on submitting ideas to the animal geographies’ team.
