Animals & Society Course Seminar

How do children and companion animals build their mutual relationships in daily life, in the context of their families and home? To what extent do these relations challenge the species barrier, or rather reproduce it? And how does this impact the shared lives of children and animals? Between 2018 and 2022, project CLAN tried to answer these questions by studying 24 Portuguese multispecies families, following a multi-step, multi-method qualitative design, which included direct observation, in-depth interviews to children and parents, visual methods, photo-eliciting interviews and participatory methods. It is now time to share some of our work: ideas and results; but also persistent and restless questions.

In this conference we bring together invited experts in the field and the researchers involved in the project to discuss the topic. In the first day, we plunge into the theoretical reasoning around the specificities of children-animal relations, and their status in the field. We also present some of our results, putting them in perspective with the state of the art. In the second day, we make way to one of our dearest dimensions in the project: how to go beyond academia, and reach wider audiences, of all ages and backgrounds. We discuss how to engage and give back to the participants. And how art and science can work together to communicate a multispecies, more-than-human, approach, which may have an impact on the wellbeing of children, animals, and families.