Speakers: 
Ann Kelly, Institute for Advanced Study
Asif Ghazanfar, Psychology, Princeton University
Brad Bolman, Institute for Advanced Study
Lisa Jones-Engel,  PETA
Beth Greenhough, Oxford University 
Agustin Fuentes, Anthropology, Princeton University 
Malene Friis Hansen, Anthropology, Princeton University

We are entering a polycrisis—an era characterized by the interlocking and simultaneous catastrophic events. The wicked and entangled nature of contemporary environmental, geopolitical and socioeconomic risk demands new forms of social scientific thinking and research better equipped to grasp how persistent shocks reverberate across landscapes, scale, system, biotic and abiotic life.  Bringing together colleagues working from human geography, political ecology, environmental justice, biological anthropology, multispecies ethnography, and science technology studies, this workshop seeks to provide critical insight into our contemporary world in unstable transition, through the lens of laboratory animal science. We seek to interrogate emerging shifts in the value and vulnerabilities of animals in research, the networks of trade through which animals circulate, the ways in which public benefit is imagined and advocacy is pursued. 

 Questions we will explore include:

• In the wake of Covid and increased global conflict what are the new networks of trade and traffic in laboratory animals? What new vulnerabilities and risk has a shift towards ‘supply chain sovereignty’ introduced?
• In what ways has the rise of accelerated research and development to meet the demands of pandemic emergencies—e.g., the use of ‘bridging studies’ for regulatory approvals—amplified the value and use of animals in research?
• How has the politics of animal welfare—including the increasing focus on Non-Animal/New Approach Methodologies (NAMS)—changed the practices of care and infrastructures of preclinical research?  
• How are these geopolitical changes affecting the relationships between biomedical researchers, traders, conservationists, and animal welfare activists and the conservation of test subjects in their habitats?

 Please register by midday on Tuesday, May 7th.