ReAnimate: Animal Political Ecologies

ReAnimate: Animal Political Ecologies will be presented by Professor Rosaleen Duffy, University of Sheffield and chaired by Professor Andrea Schapper, University of Stirling.

Abstract

This paper develops a political ecology of reanimation as a novel approach to generate a deeper understanding of new directions in wildlife conservation. It highlights the lives of individual animals in reanimated forms of nature, not just as species to ‘save’, but as essential actors in building healthy ecosystems.  To do this, the paper integrates political ecology and animal studies.  

This offers a first step by sketching out how political ecologists can move beyond anthropocentrism to take animal lives seriously. The paper also invites animal studies scholars to engage more fully with the relations of capitalism in conservation which lead to social injustices, and ultimately fail to stem rapid biodiversity loss. 

Having completed the recent research on wildlife trafficking, security and green collar crime, this is a new direction in my research; it is at the very early stages of development, so I welcome feedback on the ideas and how I intend to research them. The talk is based on a theoretical paper (currently under review) developed with Dr Peter Sands, University of York.  

Rosaleen Duffy is Professor of International Politics at the University of Sheffield, UK. She is a political ecologist, and her research focuses on the global politics of biodiversity conservation.

She is the author of Security and Conservation The Politics of the Illegal Wildlife Trade (Yale University Press, 2022) and Nature Crime (Yale University Press, 2010). From 2016-2020 she was PI on the  EUR 1.8 million European Research Council Advanced award for the BIOSEC Project (2016-2020) which focused on wildlife crime and security; and the £859,000 ESRC funded Beastly Business Project (2021-2023) on green collar crime and the illegal trade in European wildlife.