How the Multispecies Collective Came to Be

This post shares a reflective account by our founder, Iyan Offor, of how and why the Multispecies Collective came to be.

On the occasion of the Multispecies Collective’s (re)launch, our values, projects and activities have us thinking firmly about futures of flourishing for animals, nature and society. But I wish to glance back for a moment to tell the story of how this community came to life, with immense gratitude and admiration for all those who have played a role in it.

Kin

I grew up knowing multispecies kinship as a deep, unshakeable truth, practice, and lens through which to live in the world. I have my native Scottish Highlands to thank for this; it’s heather and fireweed, hares and pheasants, crofters and keepers. It presented to me a world of ways to relate to the more-than-human, sometimes through kinship and sometimes through domineering models of ownership.

There were misty morning loch side runs where I would skid to a stop, eyes locked with a stag interrupted while grazing. There were the elements under my skin every day, ensuring a sense of self developed in multispecies company. And, of course, there were friends with fur who cared for me and I for them. But, there was also years of exposure to the co-option of animals’ bodies and lives for profit in animal agriculture and aquaculture and “sport” up North. There was tyranny and grief at tale upon tale of biodiversity irreversibly lost. There was confusion at efforts to make all of this better in ways that sent shockwaves through already vulnerable and marginalised communities.

So, the founding of this collective begins with a state of desperate longing for change-making and the exploration of this in a research project called Global Animal Law from the Margins. That project gave me big words to name the problems: intersectional oppression, systemic hegemonic heteronormativity, capitalist (hell)state. It also gave me big, hopeful ideas for thinking through solutions: feminist ethics of care, posthumanist theory, black vegan feminism, critical animal studies, decoloniality. 

Ideas

While that project gave me words and ideas, a PhD and a book, it left me with the exact same inescapable, desperate drive to make change. Why? Because I had learned that building futures of flourishing for animals, nature and society would require so much more work. It would require deep, foundational critique of power structures that facilitate and ensure oppression and injustice are accepted as part of the status quo. With regard to animal liberation, I proposed thinking about this kind of work as a second wave of animal ethics that resists the way theories of animal welfare and animal rights can neglect nature and social issues. I saw risk and complacency in using tools of the ruling class as a means to make meaningful social and ecological change. One of the solutions I proposed was to build toward multispecies flourishing by creating and facilitating spaces for such work to be conducted by and for marginalised communities and individuals, as well as those who engage with theory, ideas and practices from marginalised perspectives. There is value in these insights from those who have seen societal oppressive forces working upon their lives in material and personal ways. But, I found, spaces for such work are not always easy to come by.

I found this not only in my analysis, but also in my observations. I felt too critical and queer within animal liberation research spaces, too post-/more-than-human in queer spaces, too legal in non-legal spaces, too non-doctrinal in spaces for legal research. I could see meaningful work on multispecies flourishing being produced, but I had a hard time finding easy gathering places for such work and ideas. And, I had the sneaking suspicion there might just be others out there feeling the same way.

So, inspired to make a positive impact here, I got funding to complete a postdoctoral research project in which I proposed to work toward the creation, facilitation and encouragement of such spaces. But, circumstances (the draw of a secure academic post amidst the anxieties of the Covid-19 pandemic!) meant I was not able to do that project, leaving me with unfinished business. With the benefit of hindsight, I recently realised that, unbeknownst to me, I may have been working through that unfinished business all this time. The Multispecies Collective represents so much of the impact and change I wished to make following that research project. It has not happened in the way I imagined; it has been much better than that!

Actions

In 2022, I began securing funding to recruit PhD researchers. More than anyone else, I have those researchers to thank for making this community what it is! I felt driven to build a supportive community around them due to the incredible experience I had during my own PhD research at the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law & Governance (SCELG). Because I had previously conducted a research degree in a siloed environment, the SCELG community demonstrated to me how collective, collaborative action can produce results with a pace, energy and impact that would not be possible alone. It inspired me deeply and I knew I never wanted to be without access to such a community again.

Yet, when recruiting PhD students, I found myself in a context where no such community existed. And so, I set out to build one. I felt this would give them the best experience as researchers, would enable them to do their best work, and would allow us to build toward multispecies flourishing together in a supportive, inspiring and collaborative environment. I felt I owed this to them in return for their willingness to come and work with me; that no matter how much I knew about supervision pedagogy or how much I invested into that practice, I would not be able to do their commitment justice without creating and sustaining a space for them to build their projects amongst kin. I wanted them to have a launching pad to be able to share their work and gain recognition for the amazing things they are doing and the impact they are bound to have building toward futures of multispecies flourishing. 

This was not an entirely selfless endeavour. Amidst the challenges higher education in the UK has been facing in recent years, I was working in a context in which there was little encouragement for, examples of, or support to create spaces for research practices of mutual inspiration and deep thinking. I was siloed again and needed community to be able to keep doing what good academics must do: give genuinely engaging and supportive teaching by loving what we do, make (or at least want to make) a difference, and meaningfully impact people’s careers and life paths in fields we care about. And so, in this context, with these motivations, this collective was founded in 2022 under the name ‘the Animals, Nature & Society Research Group’.

Hopes

In our first three years, our membership grew from two to six. We began with a little reading group and, from there, began to host events with partners that share our values. This enabled us to begin building our own programme of events and to expand our network. Throughout, our research projects have remained at the heart of the community, progressing individually and collaboratively toward futures of flourishing for animals, nature and society.

A year ago, as some research projects within our group began to approach their conclusion and as I prepared for a move to a new university, I began contemplating and, for a moment, doubting our future. I was acutely aware of the late-stage attention-economy we are surviving in as a post-Covid chronically-online culture. Engagement maximisation and grappling for views has become not only routinely cringe, but deeply fatiguing and, at times, a little sinister. Given that building and reaching a community entails asking for some attention, I feared we might do more harm than good by continuing to grow our network and our activities. I wondered if we ought to simply disperse into the many other wonderful research communities out there.

So, I began months of brainstorming with our members. And, in the end, we decided that there is something about what we are doing and how we are doing it that we believe in. We decided that what we do and who we are is worth sustaining and that it is possible to build something meaningful in all this mess. I was galvanised by talk of embedding our values really deeply into everything we do, blending the local with the global, and thinking creatively about each facet of our community.

So, with immense hope, we decided to (re)launch into this new phase of life as the Multispecies Collective. Our preparations for this have, I think, reified our vision, ambitions, and belief in what we do. We have landed ourselves the University of Birmingham as an incredible, supportive new host that sees the value in the work we are doing and the ways in which we creatively work toward meaningful change. Invitations we have extended in order to grow our membership have been met with the kindest enthusiasm and alignment with our values. And, our work to forge stronger bonds with our affiliates and partners who regard themselves as change-makers and future-oriented creatives has been deeply inspiring. As always, the research projects that lie at the heart of our community progress in exciting directions leading to many deeply considered and impactful results that we will continue sharing. And, lastly, in preparing for our (re)launch we have focused much attention on growing our activities and opportunities for our network to connect with us. So, this leaves me with a parting message for everyone in our network.

Home

This community has transformed the despairing drive for change that I felt into an embodied praxis and experience of meaningful hope. I see hope held at the heart of what we do to such a degree that I wanted ‘utopia’ in our name. While we ultimately decided against this, I wish for hope and meaningful action toward multispecies flourishing to be evident in all that we do. It is with this embodiment of hope that I wish to offer my sincere thanks, gratitude and admiration to every single being who has connected with our members, our activities, and our projects. 

At this moment of (re)launch, I am excited for the collective to expand beyond this story and for it to grow, become defined and refined with and because of its members. In this way, I hope for the collective to provide a home for all of our visions, even when (especially when) they feel messy or when they clash or when they feel impossible.

To our network, I wish to offer this invitation to pop into our home by reaching out to us and joining our events whenever you like. Grab a mug, a seat, a blanket, and come collaborate with us. While this community builds out of a particular set of inspirations and values, it is ultimately a space for anyone working toward multispecies flourishing (regardless of their approach or their field or their background) to feel, even for a moment, at home. We embed kindness and plurality at the heart of what we do and so we welcome anyone who feels drawn to us into our home with immense respect, gratitude, and with the intention to share some embodied hope!