Animal geographies

an international state of the field survey

Originally published in Scottish Geographical Journal

by Julie Urbanik, Sarah Bortolamiol, and Mary Capon

Panworks Fellow Dr. Julie Urbanik, along with her co-authors Sarah Bortolamiol and Mary Capon of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), are pleased to share the publication of an article detailing the results of an international survey they conducted to try and understand the global landscape of the subfield of geography known as animal geographies. The article will be part of a special issue of the Scottish Geographical Journal entitled Animal Geographies at Its Limits being co-edited by Christopher Philo and Krithika Srinivasan (forthcoming late 2024).

Posted below is the abstract of this paper, followed by an explication of results alongside corresponding maps; the full article can be accessed here.

Abstract

The past 30 years have seen the steady development of the geographic subfield of animal geographies through an ongoing expansion of research methods, theoretical concepts, and topical and species focus. In 2021, we undertook the first international survey of the subfield with two goals: to survey practitioners about their work and to determine interest in establishing an international community. In this article we share the results of what 141 respondents from 24 countries self-reported in the areas of participant demographics, definitions of animal geographies, interest in an international community, and research as related to field sites, species, methods, and future themes. Our results indicate that a gap in intra and inter-cultural understandings of what constitutes animal geographies and a lack of an organized global structure are indeed potential limits to the subfield’s capacities to continue to grow; however, we found that a focus on capacity-building and cross-cultural facilitation could provide a pathway to more international diffusion of animal geographies-based research.

We were interested in understanding the relationship between where people are working from versus where they are doing their research. The following two maps provide a baseline comparative with which to visually assess this.

(Figure 1: Home countries of respondents. Image credit: Julie Urbanik)

Home countries (primary place of living and work) of respondents (n=141). The countries listed as “others” in the legend include, in decreasing order,: Portugal (9), Canada (8), Germany (6), Australia (5), Finland (5), Switzerland (5), Brazil (4), ‘Multiple’ (4), Sweden (3), South Africa (2), Uganda (2), Austria (1), Belgium (1), Ivory Coast (1), Gabon (1), Ghana (1), Kenya (1), Lithuania (1), Malaysia (1), Netherlands (1), and Ukraine (1). Created using Magrit (developed and maintained by RIATE — Université Paris Diderot/CNRS members) and NaturalEarth map dataset.

(Figure 3: Primary research locations. Image credit: Julie Urbanik)

Primary research location comparison between survey respondents (n=110) and Hovorka (2017). Created using Magrit (developed and maintained by RIATE — Université Paris Diderot/CNRS members) and NaturalEarth map dataset.

We note two key points about our comparative map in Figure 3: (1) Hovorka explicitly did not include the United States and the United Kingdom in her review because she was focused on work outside of the two dominant countries for animal geographies research at that time, and (2) Hovorka made the determination as to what she considered animal geography-based work herself versus our locations that are self-identified by active practitioners.

Kim Hightower is the associate editor for PAN Works.

Please visit PAN Works for more about our work on ethics and animal wellbeing.