As one of my colleagues once said, “if not sustainability, then what have we got left?” This is the thought that guided us in persevering with the notion of sustainability…
I have been researching the uses and abuses of the idea of sustainability, in theory and practice, with regard to its intention to include the protection and flourishing of animals, and to facilitate animal agency and self-determination. Unfortunately, the dominant sustainability discourse has excluded animals as subjects and bearers of interests in their own rights. However, the notion of sustainability can be redeemed when reclaiming it as an interspecies notion based on a critical studies perspective. This underlies the work that I am doing, in theory and practice.
With a background in environmental education, my work also always considers the question of how do we build individual and societal capacity for a truly sustainable future, that is a future in which animals, nature and humans flourish, while recognising that we are all interconnected and part of nature?
My “official” entry into animal studies began with the award of the Factory Farming Grant by Voiceless the animal protection institute in 2008. This award was to research attitudes towards, and knowledge of, industrial animal agriculture in Australia. I was then Research Fellow at RMIT University. Between 2013 and 2021, I have been based at the University of Sydney, School of Geosciences. There, I developed a notion of interspecies sustainability to use as a framework to analyse the intention of animal using industries – in that case thoroughbred racing – to safeguard the welfare of the animals they are using. For this research, as with many other projects prior to that, I used photography as a research tool for photo-elicited interviewing. In the course of the data analysis, my focus was shifted onto the notion of naturalness, as if called for by the horses themselves who were depicted on these images. This may already have been the horses trying to speak to me at another level.
Over the years, I have had an interest in intuitive interspecies communication, but marginalised it in favour of the standard rational paradigm. Then the time came when I opened up to this truly other way of knowing. I took up formal training in this innate, ancient skill. Unexpectedly, things came full circle: I learnt that intuitive interspecies communication has become a subject of academic interest. It has found a home within the field of animal studies, amongst emerging others.
I co-founded InterspeciesTalk-TierGespräch, a collective of animal communicators with members based in Australia and Germany. I am now working as independent scholar and animal communicator, using intuitive interspecies communication to support animals and their humans, reconnect humans with all life, and facilitate the representation of animals and nature.
Iris M. Bergmann
PhD (Sustainability and Animal Studies | Geography), The University of Sydney
PhD (Environmental Education and Cognition), Southern Cross University
DipEd, Scientific Institute for School Practice, Bremen
BEd, University of Bremen
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