In this final episode of the season Claudia talks to Amanda Bunten-Walberg and Oliver French, two fellow graduate students with interests in biosecurity. They delve into some the core themes in the season (including questions about scale, reproduction, and power) as well as some of the difficulties for thinking about biosecurity and animals. 

Date Recorded: 27 January 2023

Amanda (Mandy) Bunten-Walberg (she/ her) is a PhD Candidate at Queen's University's School of Environmental Studies. Her research explores more-than-human ethics in contagious contexts through the case study of bats and COVID-19.  In particular, Mandy is interested in how more-than-human ethics, critical race theory, queer theory, and biopolitical theory might guide humans towards developing more ethical relationships with bats and other (human and more-than-human) persons who are dominantly understood as diseased. Connect with Amanda via email ([email protected]). 

Oliver French is a 3rd year PhD student at the University of St-Andrews, working as part of the Welcome Funded Global War Against the Rat project. His BA thesis explored the production and application of eco-governmental power within Swedish National Parks. His current research develops a historical-ethnography of human-rat relations in epidemic of control during the third plague pandemic with a focus on India, where he is currently on archival fieldwork. Find out more about Oliver on the St. Andrews website. 

Featured: 

• Avian Reservoirs: Virus Hunters and Birdwatchers in Chinese Sentinel Posts by Frédéric Keck
• Viral Economies: Bird Flu Experiments in Vietnam, by Natalie Porter
• Some “F” words for the environmental humanities: feralities, feminisms, futurities by Catriona Sandilands
• Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India's Central Himalayas by Radhika Govindrajan
• Mulberry Intimacies and the Sweetness of Kinship, by Catriona Sandilands
• What Comes after Entanglement? Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion by Eva Haifa Giraud
• Flying Fox: Kin, Keystone, Kontaminant by Deborah Bird Rose
• Framing Animals as Epidemic Villains: Histories of Non-Human Disease Vectors edited by Christos Lynteris

Thank you to Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E) for sponsoring this podcast; the Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research Collective for sponsoring this season; Gordon Clarke (Instagram: @_con_sol_) for the bed music;

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law and Ethics (A.P.P.L.E)

Biosecurities Research Collective
The Biosecurities and Urban Governance Research brings together scholars interested in biosecurity.

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The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of iROAR Network. Find out more on our website.