2023. The Sixth Edition. Multispecies Communities and Narratives

Time zone in Romania in November (GMT+2)

We invite you to participate in the Sixth Edition of the Anthrozoology Symposium, Multispecies Communities and Narratives, organized by „Gh. Zane” Institute for Economic and Social Research of the Romanian Academy (Iași Branch), in association with the Faculty of Biology (”Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași), Faculty of Animal Sciences and Biotechnology (University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca), Faculty of Veterinarian Medicine (”Ion Ionescu de la Brad” University for Agricultural Studies and Veterinarian Medicine of Iași), Rural Development Research Platform, and Moldavia’s History Museum (“Moldova” National Museum Complex).

Becoming increasingly aware that we are not alone, we understand that we share the planet with other forms of life that are intelligent and affectionate, shape strong community ties and form families, and develop cultures and complex models of communication. When we begin to look up from our excessive preoccupation with being human we discover the myriad forms of non-human life, communities, cultures, relationships, or, to put it in one word, the other-than-human worlds. Suppose we reframe our thinking to acknowledge and recognize the other forms of intelligence, emotion, and language that don’t resemble our own. In that case, we are facing the promise of changing the current state of affairs.

If we take the non-human animals’ matter seriously and look away from our current ideologies, we may discover that we are trapped by our systems of thinking and judging. We need to break away from anthropocentric thinking. Our economic, political, and ecological systems limit the ways we can connect with other-than-human animals and the natural world at large. We must seriously question whether and how our all-too-human limitations tie us into what we can imagine and wish for. We live in a complex and interdependent world. When we take other animals seriously, we discover more than their extraordinary lives and communities, we see their potential to demolish the barriers of our thinking and change our world. Multispecies communities recognize the multitude of life forms and try to accommodate them. When we create spaces for other beings in our human world, we explore our capacity to relate to others; and this newfound connectedness, openness, and vulnerability brings the promise of unforeseen possibilities. Until now, we have nourished the desire to control the larger-than-human world, yet we gradually realize that such control is just an illusion. All the other non-humans around us are as much a part of this web of life as we are. To find peace, balance, and prosperity we need to rediscover this sense of connectedness that requires us to make space for all the others beside us.

This year’s edition of the Symposium focuses on exploring the facts, the multispecies collectives that exist, or are being built, and the histories, the narratives that support them and teach us how we can or should envisage a multispecies future.

In this new edition of the Anthrozoology Symposium we would like to invite you to take part in a debate forum focused on the following topics concerning human-animal interactions:

Ideas, concepts, and beliefs about animals
Theories about the differences and distance between humans and animals
Animal rights and human responsibilities
Species extinction and human responsibility
Animals in literature, mythology, art, and folklore
Animal psychology
Cognitive ethology
Mental models and economic value in human-animal interactions from a historical perspective
Animal protection movement and the laws that support it

The Anthrozoology Symposium will take place online between the 2nd and 4th of November 2023. Registration is open until May 31st. The registration form may be found on our website https://anthrozoology.acadiasi.org/

On behalf of the organizing committee,

I thank you, and I am looking forward to meeting you

Dr. Irina Frasin

Program

2nd of November

OPENING

9:30 – 10:00 Eastern European Time (EET) / 7:30 – 8:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)

Welcome address from the organisers

SECTION 1 – chair: Irina Frasin

10:00 – 12:30 EET / 8:00 – 10:30 UTC

Joaquín Fernández Mateo – Shifting Paradigms: Towards a Post-Anthropocentric Framework for Ecological Crisis Mitigation
Michaël Lessard – Beyond Sentience: Legally Recognising Animals’ Sociability and Agency
Saba Pipia – Animals and the Crime of Ecocide
Rimona Afana – Challenging Captivity: Legal and Civic Strategies for Liberating Confined Nonhumans
Altamush Saeed – Anthropocentric anthroozological evolution of the status of Animals in Islam

SECTION 2 – chair: Cătălina Daniela Răducu

13:00 – 15:00 EET / 11:00 – 13:00 UTC

Kristine Hill – Did anyone ask the cats? Using speculative fiction to gain insight into the unique perspectives of individual cats (Felis catus)
Richard David Rus – On understanding in multispecies ethnography
Mare Kõiva – Humans and non-humans in contemporary society
Isabella Clarke – Animal Cultures: a paradigm for determining what matters to animals

SECTION 3 – chair: Alina Simona Rusu

16:00 – 18:00 EET / 14:00 – 16:00 UTC

Eva Meijer – Political conversations with mice
Michelle Szydlowski – ‘Elephants love you very deeply’: mahout perspectives on elephant-human relationships
Tiamant Warda – Dis/ability: a discussion on creating more accessible employment for disabled assistance dog instructors
Eveline Baptistrella – How media made us multispecies: will the burden of petification doom our possible future together?

3rd of November

SECTION 4 – chair: Aurora Hrițuleac

9:00 – 10:30 EET / 7:00 – 8:30 UTC

Rebecca Hendershott, Eboni Westbury – Biological Anthropology at the Frontlines: Rewriting Our Narrative
Gabriel Șerban – Images of the Stag – A comparative view
George Bodi, Loredana Solcan – Cattle in the Life of Communities from the Second and Third Phase of the Cucuteni-Trypillia Civilization: Representations and Archaeozoological Data

SECTION 5 – chair: George Bodi

11:00 – 13:00 EET / 9:00 – 11:00 UTC

Daniel Măgurianu, Liviu Adrian Măgurianu – The informational interconnection between humans and animals
Madeleine Walker – Unity. The Power of the Animal Kingdom to Guide You Home
Marco Adda – Wellness or Hellness? Rediscussing Free-Ranging Dogs Welfare
Alina Simona Rusu – What are they learning from us? A scoping review on the assessment of animal welfare education programs in children

SECTION 6 – Chair: Marco Adda

14:30 – 16:00 EET / 12:30 – 14:00 UTC

Jessica Ullrich – Art-Histories. Narrating Animals in aesthetic practices
Gordon Meade – More-than-human Animals in Captivity as seen through poetry and photography
Gijsje Heemskerk – What is Interspecies Collective?

SECTION 7 – Chair Marco Adda

16:30 – 17:30 EET / 14:30 – 15:30 UTC

Video screening and discussions
just wondering… – Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFdpoVeYmNY

4th of November

SECTION 8 – Chair: Ionuț Bârliba

10:00 – 12:00 EET / 8:00 – 10:00 UTC

Cătălina Daniela Răducu – The Social Construction of Gender and Species: Logical and Epistemological Inquiries
Irina Frasin – What’s in a name? Owner, guardian, companion or on how we frame our relationship with other animals
Tudor Manolăchescu – Dimensions of consciousness in cats: A critical analysis of an experimental study
Aurora Hrițuleac – Coping with Stress in Humans and Other Animals: A Comparative Analysis

SECTION 9 – Chair: Luminița Ailincăi

12:30 – 14:30 EET / 10:30 – 12:30 UTC

Marie Leth-Espensen – Curating Suffering. State-Animal Relations and the Monitoring of Care on Danish Farms
Barbora Červená, Kelly Sambucci and Paride Bollettin – Treating Parasites: veterinary medicine across the wild and domesticated in Bwindi, Uganda
Gabriela Maria Cornescu – The Use of Proximal and Distal Pointing Cues by Pigs in Object Choice Tasks –review
Katerina Balani – Gazing behaviour of dogs in the impossible task paradigm: Ontogeny , Phylogeny or both

SECTION 10 – chair: Lavinia Andreea Bejan

15:30 – 17:30 EET / 13:30 – 15:30 UTC

Mara-Grația Dezmirean, Alina Simona Rusu – Interdisciplinary Learning Objectives for Animal Cruelty Prevention Programs in Adolescents
Luminita-Iuliana Ailincai, Cynthia Deliens, Corneliu Gaspar – Study regarding the dog’s behavior and their capacity to detect some human diseases
Codrin Dinu Vasiliu – Representations of Exclusion

Cosmin Mărtinaș – Coexistence and comprehension of law. A short analysis

The symposium proceedings will be later published in a collective volume at Cluj University Press. The publishing house is accredited in all fields (www.editura.ubbcluj.ro/evaluation).

If you wish to participate in the online meetings of the symposium without contributing with a communication, please use the button below to register.

Organizing Committee

Irina Frasin, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
George Bodi, Institute of Archaeology, (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Sonia Bulei, Association of Rural Development Research Platform
Codrin Dinu Vasiliu, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Marco Adda, AEDC Anthrozoology Education Dogs Canines
Alina Simona Rusu, Faculty of Animal Science and Biotechnologies (“Babeș-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca)
Luminița Bejenaru, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași; “Olga Necrasov” Institute of Archaeological Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Aurora Hrițuleac, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Cătălina Daniela Răducu, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Liviu Adrian Măgurianu, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Ioan Sebastian Brumă, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Lucian Tanasă, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Senica Țurcanu, Moldavia’s History Museum (“Moldova” National Museum Complex, Iași)
Corneliu Gașpar, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (“Ion Ionescu de la Brad” Iași University of Life Sciences)
Luminița-Iuliana Ailincăi, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine (“Ion Ionescu de la Brad” Iași University of Life Sciences)
Lavinia Andreea Codrea, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Ionuț-Alexandru Bârliba, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Eugen Huzum, “Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research (Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)

Organizers

“Gh. Zane” Institute of Economic and Social Research
(Romanian Academy, Iași Branch)
Faculty of Biology
(“Alexandru Ioan Cuza”University of Iași)
Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences (“Babeș-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca)
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
(“Ion Ionescu de la Brad” Iași University of Life Sciences)
Moldavia’s History Museum
(“Moldova” National Museum Complex, Iași)
AEDC Anthrozoology Education Dogs Canines
Association of Rural Development Research Platform

ICES Gh. Zane

0040748599819

email