Animals Across Borders: Rethinking More‑than‑Human Geographies

A multidisciplinary conference that explores how animals move across, unsettle, and redefine territorial, ecological, and conceptual borders
About this Event

Registration

8:30 - 9:00 AM

• Checking-in, Coffee & Breakfast

Keynote 

9:10 - 09:45 AM

• Marcy Norton, University of Pennsylvania

Panel 1

09:45  - 11:15 AM

Beyond Containment: Animals, Infection, and the Governance of Life

• Niu Teo, University of Chicago, “Animal Rites: Legislating pig pains in the US 1990s”
• Sooah Kwak, University of Pennsylvania, “The Pig Multiple: Biosecurity, Waste, and Leaky Boundaries in Korea’s Leprosy Settlements”
• Thomas White, Kings College London, “Borders, Livestock Disease, and Sovereign Anxieties in Contemporary Mongolia”
• Chair: Mindi Schneider, Brown University

Coffee Break

11:15 AM - 11:45 PM

Workshop

11:45 - 12:45 PM

• Paolina Lu, UC Davis, “Cricket Capitalism: Taste, Labor, and the Future of Food”
• Charlotte Marlene Hoes, University of Goettingen, “Crating a World: Boxes as Spatial Stratifications of Care in the Global Wildlife Trade”
• Chair: Brad Weiss, William & Mary

Lunch

12:45 - 1:30 PM

Panel 2

1:30 - 3:00 PM

Moving Animals, Animals Moving: Accessing Land, Bordering Life, and Ordering Knowledge

• Jia Hui Lee, University of Bayreuth, “Species and Colonialism as Relational Systems: The Case of African Rodent Taxonomy” 
• Ailish Lalor, Harvard University, “During the Flood: The Afobaka Dam, Maroon Transmigration, and Operation Gwamba in Suriname, 1964-1971” 
• Columba González-Duarte, The New School, “Monarchs, Borders, and Mobility Justice”
• Chair : Marianna Szczygielska, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin

Spotlight

3:00 - 3:30 PM

Listening Across Borders: Animal Communication Technologies and the Reconfigurations of Legal Geographies

• Emma Crowe, César Rodriquez-Garavito & Carlos Andrés Baquero-Díaz, NYU More-Than-Human Life (MOTH)

Coffee Break

3:30 - 4:00 PM

Panel 3 

4:00 - 5:30 PM

Transcending Borders: Indigenous Traditional Knowledge in Human and More-than-Human Relationships

• Marian Leech, University of Pennsylvania, “Earthshapers, Healing Skins, Commodity Currencies: Beaver-Human Relations in Early Modern Europe and North America” 
• Carlos Roberto Galaviz, UNAM National Autonomous University of Mexico, “Man-Eaters and Messengers: Nocturnal Fauna Among Ancient Nahuas” 
• Charlotte Dawson, University of Arizona, Title: TBA
• Chair: Marcy Norton, University of Pennsylvania

Closing Discussion Q&A

5:30 - 6:00 PM