Launching the Multispecies Collective

We are delighted to announce the launch of the Multispecies Collective; a collaborative group of researchers working together with change-makers and future-oriented creatives. After organising for the past three years as the ‘Animals, Nature & Society Research Group’, we are relaunching following expansion of our membership and ambitions. We have come together aiming to create knowledge, theory and practice for positive change toward futures of flourishing for animals, nature and society.

The Multispecies Collective brings together voices from across disciplines and sectors, working across species boundaries to rethink our multispecies relationships, reconceptualise the social, political and legal systems that apply to them, and inspire change through research and knowledge sharing. We feel that collaborating on such work is of deep significance in the face of planetary-scale ecological crises impacting the lived experiences of multispecies communities and individuals across the globe.

Read on to learn about the objectives and values that underpin our collective, our research and activities, and how to get involved.

Our Objectives

The Multispecies Collective is driven by four core goals:

• Producing research and practice that generates inter/cross-disciplinary knowledge that conceptualises and instigates multispecies flourishing through legal, political, and societal change.

• Maintain a community space for mutual learning, mentoring, and collaboration towards our research goals.

• Building and connecting a network of researchers (academics, students, and others), change-makers (activists, civil society organisations, lawyers, policymakers, and others), and future-oriented creatives (artists, designers, writers, and others) working toward multispecies flourishing.

• Sharing resources and generating impact for a broad network interested in multispecies flourishing through events, communications, and impact activities.

Our Values

The Multispecies Collective is guided by a set of values held in common which guide our research and our collaborative work. Our values emphasise multispecies flourishing, integration of theory and practice, interdisciplinarity, an orientation toward change, and plural thinking.

Multispecies flourishing recognises that the threats to animal, ecological, and human flourishing have common roots and warrant intersectional responses. The Collective considers this interconnectedness of earthly ecosystems and communities, of animals, nature and society through efforts including prioritising marginal perspective, decolonisation of thought and practice, and recognition of the researcher’s positionality.

Through theory-practice integration, we recognise that change toward multispecies flourishing is most likely to be achieved through practice-informed theoretical work and theory-informed practical work. As such we inform our theoretical work with insight from practice, inform our practical work with insight from theory, and connect both forms of knowledge for and together with our network.

Interdisciplinarity recognises that change toward multispecies flourishing is most likely to be achieved when knowledge exploration and generation transcends disciplinary siloes. Here, we bridge the core of our change-oriented work in the humanities (law, policy, sociology) with work in the arts (literary, media and artistic studies and practice) and other disciplines and sources of knowledge (ecology, Indigenous knowledge, sociology etc).

Through being grounded in a change- and future-oriented approach, we recognise that the status quo is antithetical to multispecies flourishing and therefore orient our work toward meaningful change.

Through plural thinking, we recognise that a plurality of thought and practice is beneficial rather than antithetical to multispecies flourishing whilst maintaining a commitment to kindness and compassion, innovation and radical thinking, and the amplification of marginal perspectives. The Collective creates space for unlikely connections and productive tensions to arise from such pluralities and welcome all kinds of researchers and practitioners to be involved in our work.

Our research and events

At its heart, the Multispecies Collective exists to facilitate novel practices in research – through shared spaces of learning, mutual inspiration, and care for life in all its forms. The mission, objectives, and values of the Multispecies Collective guide and shape this work.

Our Research

Our research projects are the central means by which the Multispecies Collective seeks to enhance multispecies flourishing. You can learn more about our projects here. The projects currently led by the Multispecies Collective members investigate a variety of different topics including animal and posthumanist legal subjectivity, the role of civil society in shaping legal and social change for animals, carceral approaches to animal welfare crime, African animal law through a TWAIL lens, and sustainability and its relationship with religion and culture.

The heart of the Multispecies Collective, and the space where our research projects are collaboratively advanced, is the Multispecies Collective Research Lab. This is a virtual space for mutual inspiration, co-learning, blank-page-busting, and brainstorming in which our members forward their individual and collaborative research projects in pursuit of multispecies flourishing.

The Multispecies Collective prioritises taking our research to the world to facilitate mutual learning and progress toward multispecies flourishing. By sharing our research through dissemination, impact activities and research-led education, we hope to generate conversation, share information, and learn together with our network. You can learn more about our resources here.

Our Events

We love meeting with researchers, change-makers and future-oriented creatives who are interested in our objectives and values. We connect with our community regularly through our programme of events. Please do join us for our range of events which include:

• The Multispecies Collective Reading Group: our flagship gathering where our members meet our network and inspire one another to attain our objectives in line with our values.

• The Multispecies Collective Research Showcase: sharing progress or results from our ongoing research projects

• The Multispecies Collective Dialogue Series: our series of events that shines a spotlight on non-members’ research or practice toward multispecies flourishing

• The Multispecies Collective Hosting Platform: our service providing space and support to host events concerning multispecies flourishing

Whether you’re a researcher, student, creative, policymaker, activist, or practitioner, the Multispecies Collective offers a welcoming and generative space to connect and collaborate on work that matters.

👉 To learn more or join us, visit our “Join Us” page.