ln this year’s edition of the Anthrozoology Symposium, REFRAMING RESEARCH: Integrating Animal Voices and Perspectives, we invite you to explore and critically examine the multiple forms of knowledge and investigate their potential to better reveal the complex minds and worlds of the other species, and also to better understand our own mind, history and culture in relation to/with them.

Animal-focused research is both complex and fascinating, but also complicated and challenging as its long, intricate history may testify. Ever since people began to observe, investigate, and classify other living beings in an attempt to understand them and make sense of the natural world, these searches were as much influenced by what existed in the wild, as by the human mind, psyche, and culture. Being inherently anthropocentric, science reflects only human perspectives, with the risk of heading toward (the ideology of) human supremacy and exceptionalism.

In the name of objectivity, science has consistently denied animals’ capacities that were considered impossible to demonstrate. Now, although animals play extraordinarily important roles in the science concerning them, their voices are still silenced, and their perspectives are still viewed as impossible to grasp. This is one reason why we need to rethink and reframe the way we do research. When we understand that knowledge is much larger than rational inquiry, we allow ourselves to step out of our comfort zones and usual frames to explore artistic methods, sensoriality and intuition, embodied knowledge, and all other means of discovery. We need to be able to break borders if we truly want to understand other species.

Registration deadline: 31 May 2026

Coordinator: Irina Frasin

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