There are changes occurring in European peoples' relations and coexistence with animals, and CAT studies the significance of these changes. Some wild animals are now moving into people's places, whilst elsewhere, other animals are disappearing from their old places. Simultaneously, people are attempting to re-wild degraded landscapes, whilst livestock farming and transport tries to stop any contact of wild and domestic animals so as to control infectious disease. And everywhere, microbes both cause disease but also live symbiotically with their hosts in microbiota. CAT will conduct ethnographic research in the European region, focusing on moments when animals are understood to be transgressing their boundaries or having their boundaries transgressed by people. Combined with current life science knowledge of changes in the spatial coexistence of animals and people, this will provide a new approach to understand the diverse ways that people's interactions with animals are changing.

2026

2031