Tell your friends about ASI:
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Deadline Approaching for the ASI/UIUC Human-Animal Studies Summer Institute
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It’s not too late for advanced graduate students and early career scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies to apply to the Animals & Society Institute and the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Fourth Annual Human-Animal Studies Summer Institute program. The Institute is designed to support participants’ individual research in Human-Animal Studies as well as to promote interdisciplinary exchange.
Application Deadline: February 28, 2020.
This interdisciplinary program, inaugurated in 2017, is focused on graduate students and those in the first few years post-PhD. or other terminal degrees like MFA, MSW, DVM, or JD, and enables 20-30 participants to work on their dissertations or publications for one intensive week. The Institute is designed to support participants’ individual research in Human-Animal Studies as well as to promote interdisciplinary exchange. The program offers a shared space of critical inquiry that brings the participants’ work-in-progress to the attention of a network of influential HAS scholars and provides the participants with the guidance and feedback to develop their work. At the heart of the program are daily morning seminars devoted to discussion of participants’ work, followed by afternoon plenary lectures by distinguished speakers. These are complemented by special workshops and field trips to on- and off-campus locations which highlight different aspects of the human-animal relationship. The 2020 Institute will take place from July 12-19, 2020, inclusive.
Learn more about the Human-Animal Studies Summer Institute program and application process
here.
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This month, two stories about coyote-and-badger buddies swarmed the social media Interwebs, highlighting
interspecies collaboration and friendship and triggering
scholarly interest. The first set of photos, posted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, showed
a coyote and badger hunting together
.
The second was a video clip of a coyote waiting for a badger to join him and then the two
traveling together through a culvert under a highway
.
This prompted a
National Geographic piece
in which behavioral ecologist Jennifer Campbell-Smith
noted that such clips help “people see that, oh wait, just like I can have a friendship with a dog, they can, too. It’s not just a human thing; all animals can collaborate.” (See also a
popular press article
by Campbell-Smith analyzing the encounter in more depth, and
another analysis
.
)
This chain of messages highlights the power of social media to educate and foster change. With this in mind, I’m pleased to announce that ASI is in the process of launching the Human-Animal Studies Facebook group. The group is being designed as a forum for sharing information—and promoting research, accomplishments and activities—about the multifaceted relationships between humans and other animals. Watch for details!
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Also of note and in keeping with ASI’s goal of building a safe and compassionate world where both animals and people flourish, we are launching this month a new section,
HAS Law and Policy.
This intermittent section of the HAS e-Newsletter will include commentary and information on academic inquiry, legal developments, and proposed and enacted legislative actions related to animal policy, in the space where nonhuman animal interests meet politics and the law.
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Calling for Student Poster Sessions at American Psychology Association!
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Are you a student who has recently completed a project on human-animal interaction? If so, Human-Animal Interaction (HAI), a section under Division 17 (Society of Counseling Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (APA), wants to hear from you! The HAI section is soliciting posters for our Division and for the HAI social hour at the annual APA Convention being held August 6-9, 2020, in Washington, D.C. Poster proposals may be empirical studies or theoretical considerations relevant to human-animal interaction and are due March 20, 2020. You can find the application
here
.
ASI is pleased to be part of the HAI leadership team. Consistent with ASI’s mission, the section is dedicated to professional and scholarly activities that advance the understanding of human-animal interactions as they relate to psychology. Learn more and
sign up
to be a member at Human-Animal Interaction!
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Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act
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Earlier this month, ASI signed on to a congressional letter along with other environmental, conservation and animal welfare/protection organizations to support S.1499 Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act.
Here is a brief excerpt of this letter which explains the Act in more detail. The Wildlife Corridors Conservation Act establishes a National Wildlife Corridors Program that would provide for the designation of National Wildlife Corridors on federal public lands as well as funding for states, tribes, and other entities to enhance habitat connectivity on non-federal lands through wildlife crossings and other habitat connectivity projects. This will ensure that fish, wildlife, and plants can move between habitats for migration, dispersal, genetic exchange, and climate adaptation across the country. The bill directs federal land and water management agencies to collaborate with each other, as well as with states, tribes, local governments, and private landowners, to develop and manage national wildlife corridors consistent with existing laws and according to the habitat connectivity needs of native species. The bill also creates a publicly available National Wildlife Corridors Database to inform corridor protection. Establishing
this program is a critical step forward in protecting and restoring fish, wildlife, and plant species populations across our nation’s lands and waters.
The Act will also improve human and wildlife road safety by mitigating wildlife collisions. Estimated costs for wildlife vehicle collisions are more than $8 billion dollars per year in the United States. Wildlife crossings, including bridges, enlarged and retrofitted culverts, and tunnels designed to help wildlife safely cross the road have proven to be the most effective measure to reduce wildlife-vehicle collisions.
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Are you an ASI member working to create safer and more compassionate communities? Do you have a new
manuscript, scholarly article, project or program that you'd like to share?
If so, we want to hear from you!
To be featured in ASI's monthly e-newsletter, email your story to Ivy Collier at ivy.collier@animalsandsociety.org
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We are almost halfway to our goal of raising $3,000 to provide three tuition scholarships to our Summer Institute. But we need your assistance! Help us advance the field of Human-Animal Studies by supporting graduate students and early-career scholars who might not be able to attend without this scholarship. To give now,
click here
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