AASA is delighted to invite you to join us for the 2024 Val Plumwood lecture.

This year the lecture will be delivered by Dr Erika Cudworth. Erika works in the School of Applied Social Sciences at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. She has published multiple books that have shaped the animal studies field including Developing Ecofeminist Theory: The complexity of difference (2005), Social Lives with Other Animals: Tales of sex, death and love (2011), and The Emancipatory Project of Posthumanism with Stephen Hobden (2018). Her latest book, Animal Entanglements: Muddied living in dog-human worlds, was published in 2024.

Erika will draw on aspects of her work in animal sociology which frame human relations with non-human animals in terms of a social system of domination – anthroparchy. Anthroparchy describes a system of social relations of human domination in which the non-human living world of beings and things are subordinated in complex relations of humancentrism, privilege and power.

About this event

The Australian philosopher Val Plumwood (1939-2008) was a pioneering ecofeminist thinker, and important in articulating theoretical connections between anthropocentricism, patriarchy and environmental devastation.

Beginning with the 2009 Minding Animals conference in Newcastle, Australia, the Val Plumwood Memorial Lecture has been an opportunity to mark the contribution of Plumwood to the field of animal studies, and celebrate work by leading international thinkers who have been informed by ecofeminist foundations. Previous Memorial Lecture speakers were Deborah Bird Rose (2009), Freya Matthews (2011), Kate Rigby (2013), Anat Pick (2015), Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (2017), pattrice jones (2019), and Richard Twine (2022).

This event is organised by the Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA), the preeminent professional body for animal studies in the region. The Association welcomes academics, researchers, advocates, activists and interested peoples, AASA provides a hub for research, opportunities and robust discussion in the field of animal studies.

Registration

This lecture is free for all AASA members.

To apply to become a member of AASA, please click here (current membership rates per annum are $60 waged/$15 unwaged, membership is subject to approval. Following payment of the membership fee, there will be no charge for this event).