Species & Spaces
Understanding how species and research sites in animal research challenge established infrastructures, practices and cultures.
Based at the School of Geography and the Environment, at the University of Oxford, Species and Spaces sought to understand the challenges that different and unusual species and sites introduce into animal research, and what these challenges might mean for established infrastructures, practices, and cultures of animal care.
Our research was concentrated into two streams. ‘Species’ focused mainly on fish, and especially the ongoing explosion in the use zebrafish in research over the last two decades, as well as the so-called ‘higher invertebrates’, cephalopods and crustaceans. ‘Spaces’ examined research at Places Other Than Licensed Establishments (POLES), such as wildlife field projects, fisheries, farms, zoos, and veterinary clinics.
A number of broad questions guided our work: How do human-animal relationships influence the implementation of animal welfare regulations? How does the introduction and spread of different species and sites transform practices of ethical review, the 3Rs, animal care, and public engagement? How are the borders between regulated and unregulated research shaped by ideas about animal sentience and suffering, the ethics applied to different categories of animals (e.g., pets, wildlife, and farm animals), and definitions of science, veterinary treatment, and animal management?
We are approached these questions using a combination of methods including documentary analyses, in-depth interviews with stakeholders (e.g. researchers, regulators, animal technicians, Named Persons, suppliers, regulators, and welfare charities), and participant observation in different settings in industry and university sectors. We also developed new techniques for engaging stakeholders and publics in conversations about how to culture care in animal research across diverse roles, settings and species.
Relevant, tagged site content:
Engagement Activities
Care-full Stories is an adaptable training toolkit for those working in the animal research sector. It uses fictionalized prompts as a resource for staging small group discussions around institutional cultures of care.
Find out how you really feel about fish! The psychic fish is an interactive encounter that invites people to think about fish and their use in research.
Publications
The paper builds on earlier an earlier blog by Ally Palmer called 'Can animals volunteer to participate in research?' We use the questions rasied by Ally to examine together the different ways that scientific researchers talk about animals' volunteering in research papers and reflect on the ethical importance of this discourse.
This report describes the development, piloting and evaluation of a two-to-three hour training exercise that uses storytelling to reflect upon the culture of care in animal research establishments.
Historically and today, the law serves as a site of struggle over animal research. The UK's Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act (A(SP)A) of 1986 sought to balance the interests and concerns of scientists, vets, animal welfare campaigners, and publics. If we accept that the law plays this central role in balancing concerns about animal research, it is important to understand how this is facilitated in practice through the interpretation of key terms within the legislation such as “animal research” and “experimentation”. Our purpose in this paper is to explore how the remit and edges of animal research law are constituted, in the sense of grasping something in accordance with cultural codes that make it meaningful for a particular group, in order to determine what counts as permissible animal research and experimentation.
This book features highlights from the Animal Research Nexus Programme to demonstrates how the humanities and social sciences can contribute to understanding what is created through animal procedures - including constitutional forms of research governance, different institutional cultures of care, the professional careers of scientists and veterinarians, collaborations with patients and publics, and research animals, specially bred for experiments or surplus to requirements.
Developing the idea of the animal research nexus, this book explores how connections and disconnections are made between these different elements, how these have reshaped each other historically, and how they configure the current practice and policy of UK animal research.
Beth and Emma contributed a short piece on how American political theorist Lauren Berlant's concept of 'cruel optimism' can be thought with in relation to animal research.
This paper explores what happens to care, and decisions about ending and extending life, when research animals become pets and pets become research animals. To do this, we draw on in- depth qualitative research on (i) rehoming of laboratory animals, (ii) veterinary clinical research, and (iii) the role of the Named Veterinary Surgeon (NVS) in UK animal research. Key contributions of our work include highlighting: how care roles can be split; the impor- tance of considering speculative and in-practice elements of care; the context-dependency and multiplicity of practices of killing in the veterinary clinic and laboratory; and the flexibility and changing nature of animal categories.
Fish are the third most commonly used protected species in research (Understanding Animal Research, 2021) and are increasingly used in initiatives to engage publics with biomedical research. This workshop was convened in order to explore these developments, share experiences, and assess the challenges and opportunities of including discussion of fish welfare in relevant public engagement activities.
This report describes the design, piloting and evaluation of a 2–3-hour training exercise that uses storytelling to reflect upon the culture of care in animal research establishments.
Drawing on insights from qualitative social science research, this paper aims to prompt reflection on social, ethical and regulatory challenges faced by scientists undertaking invasive animal research in the field. We explore challenges relating to the management of (i) relationships with publics and stakeholders; (ii) ethical considerations not present in the laboratory; (iii) working under an array of regulations; and (iv) relationships with regulators (especially vets). We argue that flexibility—at a personal and policy level—and respect for others’ expertise emerged as two key ways of negotiating ethical challenges, fostering positive working relationships and promoting good care for individual animals and broader ecosystems.
Laboratory animal science represents a challenging and controversial form of human-animal relations because its practice involves the deliberate and inadvertent harming and killing of animals. We propose that different notions of care are enacted alongside, not only permitted levels of harm inflicted on research animals following research protocols, but also harms to ATs in the processes of caring and killing animals.
Blog entry
We are excited to announce our new edited volume – Researching Animal Research – forthcoming (January 2024) with Manchester University Press.
In our work on the cultures of care and communication in animal research, we often asked ourselves the question: why are fish not the ‘poster critters’ of animal research?
Care is complicated and hard.
Leading research organisations, such as the UK’s Wellcome Trust (2020), recognise there is a need to create a more care-full and supportive working environmen
In part 1 of this blog series, we introduced the idea of a ‘spectrum of visibility’ in animal research, with
Events
The Animal Research Nexus Programme is hosting a conference entitled 'Researching Animal Research' on 30th – 31st of March at the Wellcome Collection in London.
How, why (and why not) are fish utilised as mascots in public engagement with animal research?
Reuben Message presented at the RSPCA organised 'Focus on Fish' online event on the 23rd of February 2021.
Citizen science is a fundamental contributor to wildlife research in the UK but its regulation can be complex.
What kinds of ethical and practical challenges do wildlife researchers face? How do these challenges compare with those faced by researchers working with laboratory animals?
Our ‘Psychic Fish’ intervention had another successful outing last Friday night at the Oxford Museum of Natural History.
On the 29th of November 2018, Animal Research Nexus team members helped to organise an event on the standardisation of welfare terminology.
Friday 28 September is European Researcher’s night, and for the fourth time Manchester Museum will be hosting Science Uncovered Manchester - a special late opening showcasing Manchester’s finest researchers and their work for an adult audience.
Announcements
We are delighted to announce that Ally Palmer joined the Animal Research Nexus team based at Oxford University in July 2018. Ally is an anthropologist who recently completed her PhD on conflicts around orangutan rehabilitation.