Announcements
CALL FOR PAPERS
Seeking papers for a Special Issue of the Journal of Historical Geography
Historical Animal Geographies
The Journal of Historical Geography invites proposals for a special issue of papers addressing Historical Animal Geographies, co-edited by Karen M. Morin and Alice J. Hovorka.
Geographers’ scholarly interest in the study of animals began in the early 20th century but with a significant and robust ‘animal turn’ beginning in the latter 20th century. This animal turn radically shifted where, how, and why animals were studied within the discipline yet specifically historical studies of animals largely evolved in cognate disciplines. Key texts in historical animal studies have shaped debates around animal agency, multispecies histories, and interdisciplinary methods (e.g. Bonnell and Kheraj 2022; Kean and Howell 2018; Nance 2015; Roscher et al. 2021; Ritvo 2022). Geographers have increasingly made unique contributions to the historical study of animals with their primary focus on the spatial dimensions of animal lives in and of themselves and in relation to humans.
Notably, Wilcox and Rutherford’s edited collection Historical Animal Geographies (2018) set the scene for works on historical animal geographies. In that collection Wilcox and Rutherford note that while there have been many exceptional and novel works in animal geographies, little of it has been overtly historical. They call for animal geographies to be more critically historical – with attention to animals as actors and a more relational understanding of human-animal co-existence across time and space. They also call for historical animal studies to be more deeply geographical with the benefit of concepts such as scale and spatiality, alongside agency, contingency, and change through time.
This special issue of Historical Animal Geographies seeks to build on this ground-breaking collection with works at the interstices of history, geography, and critical animal studies. It will focus on themes that attempt to distinguish what it means to think geographically about animals with an emphasis on the historical shifts and framings that have occurred in the study of animals. Geographical work has focused on spatial violence in its many forms, such as in animal captivity and commodification (Collard and Dempsey 2013; Gillespie and Collard 2015; Morin 2018); animal domestications and extinctions (Wolch and Emel 1998; Braverman 2014); the role of space and place in creating and maintaining human-animal ontologies and boundaries (Srivinasan 2019; Philo and Wilbert 2000; Howell 2021); the spatial dynamics of animal mobilities (Hodgetts and Lorimer 2020); legal frameworks and animal rights (Nast 2015; Braverman 2015); gender relations and reproductive abuse (Hovorka 2012; Gillespie 2018); animal labor and work (Greenbough and Roe 2011; Urbanik 2012), and animal welfare and wellbeing (Davies 2012; Buller and Roe 2018, Evans and Miele 2019), among many others. Studies have collectively extended understandings of animals’ minds and behaviors and unequal human-animal power relations in place, illustrating radically shifting epistemologies about animals, and considering animal lives and experiences in new and evolving ways. Important epistemological shifts throughout the 20th and 21st centuries have paid special attention to shifts in thinking about animal agency; the methodologies used to study animal geographies; and the ethical and moral dimensions that geographers have expressed in their studies of animals.
As the benchmark sub-disciplinary quarterly, the Journal of Historical Geography publishes articles on all aspects of historical geography and cognate fields in the social sciences, arts, and humanities. The co-editors of this special issue on Historical Animal Geographies will consider a wide-ranging set of themes including but not limited to:
· How to describe, represent, and reconstruct past geographies of animals (spaces, places, landscapes, environments, mobilities and networks)?
· How is the presentness of the animal past produced through landscapes, texts, memories and archives?
· How can we recognise diverse spatial and temporal imaginaries of animals (for instance, ancestral, spiritual, religious, or environmental)?
· What has been the reach and influence of different models and institutional hubs of historical geography of animals?
· How can the theories and methods used to study the historical geography of animals be applied to geography's disciplinary histories?
Deadline for Abstracts: January 15, 2026
Expressions of interest (consisting of a title and a 250-word abstract) should be forwarded to the editors of the special issue – Professor Karen Morin (morin@bucknell.edu) and Professor Alice Hovorka (ahovorka@yorku.ca) by January 15, 2026.
The deadline for accepted submissions will be June 15, 2026. Submissions should follow the Journal’s standard guidelines https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-historical-geography and authors should feel free to contact the editors for advice and guidance. We invite papers from established scholars as well as early career scholars, and especially scholars from underrepresented regions, and the Journal of Historical Geography offers enhanced editorial support to these authors.
The papers will go through the Journal’s standard peer review process. As soon as papers are accepted, they will be published online (with a DOI) and then allocated to the next available journal issue for formal publication. When all are complete we will collate the papers and launch them as a virtual special issue with an online editorial introduction.
References
Bonnell, J. and Kheraj, S. (Eds.) (2022) Traces of the Animal Past: Methodological Challenges in Animal History. University of Calgary Press.
Braverman, I. (2015) More-than-human legalities: Advocating an “animal turn” in law and society. In A. Sarat and P. Ewick P (Eds.) The Handbook of Law and Society (pp. 307-321). John Wiley & Sons.
Braverman, I. (2014) Conservation without nature: The trouble with in situ versus ex situ conservation. Geoforum 51: 47-57.
Buller, H. and Roe, E. (2018) Food and Animal Welfare. Bloomsbury Academic.
Collard, R.-C. and Dempsey, J. (2013) Life for sale? The Politics of lively commodities. Environment and Planning A 45 (11), 2682-2699.
Davies, G. (2012). Caring for the multiple and the multitude: Assembling animal welfare and enabling ethical critique. Environment and Planning D: Society and space, 30(4), 623-638.
Evans, A. B. and Miele, M. (2019). Enacting public understandings: The case of farm animal welfare. Geoforum, 99, 1-10.
Gillespie, K. (2018) The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. The University of Chicago Press.
Gillespie, K and Collard, R.-C. (Eds.) (2015) Critical Animal Geographies: Politics, Intersections, and Hierarchies in a Multispecies World. Routledge.
Greenbough, B. and Roe, E. (2011) Ethics, space, and somatic sensibilities: Comparing relationships between scientific researchers and their human and animal experimental subjects. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (1), 47-66..
Hodgetts, T. and Lorimer, J. (2020) Animals’ mobilities. Progress in Human Geography 44 (1), 4-26.
Howell, P. (2021) Animals, Agency and History. In Handbook of Historical Animal Studies, M. Roscher, A. Krebber, and B. (Eds.) Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Hovorka, A.J. (2012) Women/chickens vs. men/cattle: Insights on gender-species intersectionality. Geoforum 43 (4), 875-884.
Kean, H. and Howell, P. (Eds.) (2018) The Routledge Companion to Animal-Human History. Routledge.
Lorimer, H. (2006) Herding memories of humans and animals. Environment and Planning D: Society & Space 24, 497-518.
Morin, K.M. (2018) Carceral Space, Prisoners and Animals. Routledge.
Nast, H. (2015) Pit Bulls, slavery, and whiteness in the mid- to late- nineteenth century US: Geographical trajectories; primary sources. In K. Gillespie and R.C. Collard (Eds.), Critical Animal Geographies (pp. 127-146), Routledge.
Nance, S. (Ed.) (2015) The Historical Animal. Syracuse University Press.
Philo, C. and Wilbert, C. (2000) (Eds.) Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations. Routledge.
Ritvo, H. (2022). Recent work in animal history (and how we got here). The Journal of Modern History, 94 (2), 404-419.
Roscher, M., Krebber A. and Mizelle, B. (Eds.) (2021) Handbook of Historical Animal Studies. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Srinivasan, K. (2013) The biopolitics of animal being and welfare: Dog control and care in the UK and India. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38 (1), 106-119.
Urbanik, J. (2012) Placing animals: An introduction to the geography of human-animal relations. Rowman & Littlefield.
Wilcox, S. and Rutherford, S. (2018) (Eds.) Historical Animal Geographies. Routledge.
Wolch, J. and Emel. J. (Eds.) (1998) Animal Geographies: Place, Politics, and Identity in the Nature-Culture Borderlands. Verso.
Colloque Les Animaux: De choses à êtres sentients- 10 ans après la réforme du droit animalier au Québec
Friday, May 15, 2026 – Saturday, May 16, 2026
9:30 p.m. – 6 p.m.
This event is free.
Organization: Social Justice Centre
Contact: Christiane Bailey
Location: J.W. McConnell Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
SHIFT Centre for Social Transformation
Room Open space (first floor)
Montreal, QC
Cet événement aura lieu en français.
Ce premier colloque de l’Observatoire québécois de droit animalier propose de réfléchir au bilan des 10 ans suivant la réforme du droit animalier de 2015 qui, sur le plan juridique, a fait passer les animaux de choses à êtres sentients.
If you have any announcements related to a critical animal studies or animal activist event or publication that you’d like to have posted, please contact Chloë Taylor @ chloe3@ualberta.ca with the information.