Research
This section of the website primarily aims to assist researchers by showcasing innovative Australian animal studies project exemplars. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines, scholars document and explain their research process.
Kirrilly Thompson – Performing Human-Animal Relations in Spain
This project exemplar refers to the management of a qualitative human-animal relations focussed PhD in anthropology (Thompson 2007). My thesis offered a non-binary and post-humanist understanding of the mounted bullfight. It presented the mounted bullfight as a performance of the fluidity of the human-animal boundary.
The idea for my doctoral research came from my ongoing mission to incorporate my life passions into my research. As a horse-rider, I am particularly interested in human-horse relations. Academically, I’m interested in performance. Read more…
Steven White and Peter Sankoff – Animal Law in Australasia: A New Dialogue
This project was conducted over nearly two years, from mid-2007 to early 2009. The project was led by Peter Sankoff (Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Auckland) and Steven White (Lecturer, Griffith Law School, Griffith University).
The project sought to give impetus to the embryonic field of animal law in Australasia, providing a critical account of the legal regulation of the interests of animals, and a valuable resource for legal academics seeking to introduce animal law into law school curricula, and others with an interest in animal law reform. Read more…
Rick De Vos – Extinction: Social Significance and cultural Practice
Ever since I first visited museums and viewed mounted specimens and pictures of extinct animals, and read about the disappearance of these animals, I have struggled with the concept of what such animals mean to me and what my connection with them is ….
My project aims to examine constitutive practices and representations of extinction across a range of discursive contexts in order to consider the social and cultural significance of extinction. I wish to come to an understanding of how extinction is determined and by whom, the spaces and times in which extinction occurs and is read as meaningful, and how humans participate in and make sense of extinction.
