Virtual Seminar Series on Veganism, Gender and Class: Dr. Thea Wiesli and Cameron Dunnett

Virtual seminar with Dr. Thea Xenia Wiesli and Cameron Dunnett on Veganism, Gender and Class

This free virtual seminar will take place on Wednesday 15 January 2025, from 3–4:30 PM Irish Standard Time. This seminar is part of a series that runs in the academic year 2024-2025, organised by the Animal Studies Research Network UCD, as part of its Environmental Humanities strand.

Thea Xenia Wiesli will join us to speak about her research that identifies factors influencing meat consumption among various socioeconomic groups and social classes in high-income countries and develops support strategies. Xenia will present the results of a critical literature review on the influencing factors on meat consumption of socioeconomic groups and social classes and the specific drivers and barriers to reducing meat. Moreover, Xenia will give insights into my factorial survey testing influencing factors among social groups and classes in the United Kingdom by an experimental design and its hypotheses and vignettes. 

Cameron Dunnett will join us to talk about the gendered and intersectional relations of power within animal advocacy spaces, drawing on the personal narratives of activists. These narratives explore in what ways animal activists and organisations in the UK challenge and/or reinforce other value dualisms such as masculinity/femininity and reason/emotion. Dunnett will provide an ecofeminist reading of the history of animal advocacy in the UK, discuss some of the ways activist spaces can become masculinised/feminised, and share some stories from his interviews with individuals across the gender spectrum, within the UK ‘animal freedom’ movement. By doing so, the goal is to contribute to the envisioning of an inclusive and intersectional vegan future that deconstructs hierarchical relationships among humans and between humans and other animals.

About the speakers:

Thea Xenia Wiesli has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Sociology since 2023. Her research interests lie in sustainable development, food studies, just food, meat consumption, animal-human relations and regional sociology. Her current research project concerns the reduction of meat consumption among social classes and socioeconomic groups. She teaches courses about agrarian and regional sociology in the bachelor's and master's courses of the Department of Sociology in Innsbruck. In her PhD, she investigated the connection between sustainability and high quality of life in rural regions and nature parks. In other research projects at the University of Bern, she worked on the resettlement of mountain villages, food policies and food justice.

Cameron Dunnett is a PhD student at Edge Hill University and is a member of the Centre for Human Animal Studies. His work draws on vegan sociology, vegan masculinities, ecofeminism, and critical animal studies, among others. His thesis adopts an intersectional (eco)feminist lens to explore the gendered dynamics of vegan activist groups and the gendered performances of vegan activists, with a particular focus on constructions of masculinities. He has also recently achieved the status of Fellow (FHEA) for teaching and learning support in higher education.

The Animal Studies Research Network at UCD is organised by Deborah Schrijvers and Poulomi Choudhury.

Thanks to @Simon Berger via Unsplash