Dr. Zipporah Weisberg gives a lecture on humanism at the University of Vienna  (Photo Credit: Oliver Hirtenfelder) On November 11, 2025, Dr. Zipporah Weisberg – who teaches at the University of Ottawa and is a guest researcher at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna – gave a compelling talk at the University of Vienna’s Department of Philosophy. Her central message was both surprising and refreshing: despite decades of critique, the humanist tradition still contains valu

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

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 field of animal studies. 10 September 2025, “Opium for the Earth at the expense of nonhuman animals? A non-anthropocentric perspective on Geoengineering” by Dr Leonie N. Bossert (University of Vienna, 17:00-19:00). 8 October 2025, “Virtual Animals: An Ethical Discussion” by Dr Judith Benz-Schwarzburg (Immersium,  17:30-19:30) 11 November 20

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.