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,...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...