Summer Conference 2019

‘Animal Histories’

Keynote speaker: Professor Erica Fudge

History Department Open Space,

King’s College London, 6th-7th June 2019.

This summer the Animal History Group will again hold a two-day conference. This event will conclude the 2018–19 programme of events organised by the Animal History Group, the London-based network for postgraduates, academics, museum workers and other professionals whose work engages with animals in history. We are honored to welcome Professor Erica Fudge from the University of Strathclyde as our keynote speaker. Erica is Director of the British Animal Studies Network. Her influential work has used the early modern history of animals to explore human-animal relations.

To register go to: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/animal-history-group-summer-conference-2019-tickets-60524545545

Programme:

Thursday 6 June

11:00 – Arrival and coffee
11:30 – Panel 1 – Empire
13:00 – Lunch
14:00 – Panel 2 – Ethics
15:30 – Break
16:00 – Panel 3 – Emotions
17:30 – Drinks
18:00 – Keynote Lecture

19:00 – Conference Dinner

Friday 7 June

10:00 – Arrival Coffee
10:30 – Panel 4 – Technologies
12:00 – Lunch
13:00 – Panel 5 – Health
14:30 – Break
15:00 – Panel 6 – Environments
16:00 – Round Table Discussion/Closing Remarks

Thursday 6th June

Panel 1 – Empire

The White Ant’s Burden: Insects, Empire and Entomo-politics in South Asia

Rohan Deb Roy, University of Reading

“The animals went in four by four”: Collection-building at Rothschild’s Zoological Museum, Tring

Eleanor Larsson, King’s College London

The Changing Dynamics of Camel Nomadism in Western Sahara, from Colonialism to Displacement

Matthew Porges, University of St Andrews.

Panel 2 – Ethics

Gods, Humans, and Animals: an archaeological investigation of animal sacrifice in Roman Britain

Mirjam von Bechtolsheim, University of Oxford.

“Making Beavers to Success”: The (In)visible Animal in Thomas Tryon’s Vegetarian Thinking

Adam Bridgen, University of Oxford.

Victorian anti-cattle ship campaigns and the legacy of the transatlantic slave trade

Rosalind Hayes, UCL.

Panel 3 – Emotions

Dogs of the Third Reich: Companion Animals and the Holocaust

Rivers Gambrell, University of Oxford.

Animals as objects for use and entertainment: a case study in changing emotional attitudes in working class rural Britain

Hera Cook, University of Otago Wellington Medical School.

“The dogs are in general useless for anything” – The First Dogs of the South Pacific

Carys Williams, Dogs Trust.

Keynote: The Cows of London

Professor Erica Fudge.

This paper picks up from the research I undertook on London’s cattle for Quick Cattle and Dying Wishes, and uses some recent historiographical ideas to think about how early modern Londoners thought about the animals they encountered in the streets. At the end of potentially lengthy journeys, and on their way to slaughter, these creatures would have been regular presences – filling the streets with noise, smell, danger. But how did people make sense of them? Were they simply a nuisance, or were ethical issues raised by their presence? This paper will speculate on how we might attempt to walk alongside those who lived in London 400 years before us.

Conference Dinner – Details TBC

7th June