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This semester we are proud to announce the launch of the Vienna Animal Studies' Visiting Lecture Series. Unlike the Winter and Summer Lecture Series that aim to highlight the work of scholars based in Vienna and foster networking and collaboration, the Visiting Lecture Series provides opportunities to scholars who are visiting the city to showcase their work. We start off this initiative on the 19th of November with a fascinating talk by Dr Barbara Holthus on the multifacete

VAS Members have actively been engaging in knowledge dissemination, especially as it relates to matters concerning animals and ethics. Carlo Salzani appeared in episode 1 of the Tiereethik weiterdenken , a German speaking podcast focused on animals and ethics. Carlo discusses his recent book, The Limits of Imagination , and delves into the world of empathy. Doris Schneeberger also appeared on Knowing Animals , an animal studies podcast in which Josh Milburn talks to scholars

Wir freuen uns sehr, bekanntzugeben, dass DDr. Doris Schneeberger für ihre Dissertation „Nonhuman animals in organizations: Contributing to the ‘animal turn’ in management and organization studies“ mit dem Stephan-Koren-Preis der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien ausgezeichnet wurde. Der Stephan-Koren-Preis wird jährlich vom Verband der Professor:innen der WU Wien zur Förderung des wissenschaftlichen Nachwuchses vergeben. Er würdigt Dissertationen, die durch ihre Exzellenz und wiss

Dr. Judith Benz-Schwarzburg gives a lecture on virtual animals at the Immersium in Vienna (Photo Credit: Oliver Hirtenfelder) On the 8th of October 2025 the Vienna Animal Studies group hosted its largest lecture yet. Held within the impressive in Immersium in Vienna Dr. Judith Benz-Schwarzburg, a Senior Researcher in Animal Ethics and Animal Cognition at the Messerli Research Institute, talked to us about the ethics of digitally representing animals. The event started with a

In August 2025, one of the last summer nights before autumn was set to arrive and I find myself standing with my children in front of the Botanical Garden in Vienna, ready to encounter a species most of us rarely pay attention to and often have ambiguous feelings about: the bat.  Rym „Batwoman“ Nouioua, an expert from the University of Vienna, is taking a small group of scholars and their children on a nature walk to listen and learn about bats.

On the 10th of September, Dr Leonie Bossert started the Vienna Animal Studies (VAS) 2025 Winter Lecture Series by asking whether geoengineering has the potential to help animals or if it just presents another “techno-fix” informed by ideas of human domination.

We are proud to announce the speakers for our Winter Lecture Series including lectures by scholars based in Vienna who are working in the...

Konstantin Deininger, Katharina Leibezeder, and I were recently interviewed by Mara-Daria Cojocaru about our contribution to the project "Philosophy in the Wild. Finding Hope in Mixed Communities," a project that between April 2025 and April 2026 will collect fieldnotes and multispecies poetry in an anthrozoological vasculum that represents Mary Midgley’s biscuit tin

More than twenty people gathered on the 11th of June 2025 to hear Dr Carlo Salzani talk on the development of the modern zoo. Focusing on Schönbrunn Zoo, Dr Salzani used Foucault's models of power as a theoretical grid to argue that ‘the zoo’ and ‘the prison’ are expressions of the same disciplinary matrix.

Carlo Salzani, VAS member and animal ethicist, recently published Animals, Empathy, and Anthropomorphism: The Limits of Imagination. We caught up with him to find out more about this open access book and his motivations for writing it.

Between May 15-16, at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna, an international and interdisciplinary research project named “Contested Moral Framings: Human and Animal Life”, funded by AKTION, hosted a workshop titled “Toward an Understanding of Framing in Animal Ethics.”

We are proud to announce that Vienna Animal Studies member Dr Doris Schneeberger has been shortlisted in the inaugural Siobhan O'Sullivan...

On the evening of May 14th, the Vienna Animal Studies (VAS) group hosted a lecture by Dr. Samuel Camenzind of the University of Vienna. His talk, titled “Genetic Pain Surgery with Molecular Scissors,” presented the questions of ethics and science of genetic pain disenhancement in animals.

Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) verändert unsere gesellschaftlichen und unsere alltäglichen Praktiken – das ist nichts Neues. Doch was passiert, wenn wir den Nutzen und die Risiken dieser Technologie nicht nur in ihrer Anwendung auf Menschen, sondern auch auf nichtmenschliche Tiere bewerten? Denn auch für diese kann die Technologie disruptive Wirkungen entfalten, die mit zahlreichen ethischen Herausforderungen, aber auch Chancen, einhergehen.

The 2025 European Society for Critical Animal Studies (EACAS) meeting in Berlin was filled with inspiring, sober, and imaginative interventions into the world of animal studies,

Dr Claudia Hirtenfelder answers some questions about urban animal studies and the connections between animals and cities.

On the 12th of March 2025 Dr Doris Schneeberger discussed her recently published book Envisioning a Better Future for Nonhuman Animals.

We are proud to announce our inaugural Summer Lecture Series including lectures by scholars based in Vienna who are working in the field...

We are now accepting chapter proposals for the edited handbook “Animals in Business Ethics: Managing Multispecies Relations in Organizations

Receipt of works in the form of scientific articles, essays, reviews, interviews, literary texts, images or other formats that reflect on...