Since its formation in 2017, ASRI has provided an interdisciplinary research hub at the University of Victoria for all research that promotes critical thinking on interspecies relations. Events throughout the academic year include an ongoing Distinguished Speaker Series, an annual Graduate Writing Conference, and Film Screenings with Discussion Panels.

ASRI brings together students, faculty, independent scholars, and community members to consider and debate how anthropocentrism and speciesism, along with their entanglements in other power-laden social forces, shape our societies and communities in terms of how humans and humanity imagine, represent, interact with, and are constituted by animals and animality. The Initiative seeks to foster understanding of the intricacies, complexity, and depth of human-animal relations and identities as well as how we can move at local and global levels to a less violent, more harmonious interspecies society.

More information may be found here.

University of Victoria Animals & Society Research Initiative is a member of the Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network.