AASA has a valuable Early Career Researcher (ECR) member base and the organisation wanted to highlight their contributions to and visions for the field. To conclude our celebration of 20 years of AASA, this panel draws on the fresh and exciting experiences of early career researchers to explore what the future of Animal Studies might hold. Hear from Darren Chang, Natalia Ciecierska-Holmes, Agata Kowalewska and Andi Stapp-Gaunt as they share their experiences of the evolving landscape of Animal Studies and their diverse pathways into the field. Together they will consider the opportunities and tensions facing animal studies today, and offer their visions for how the field might continue to grow through community, collaboration and innovation in multispecies thinking.

Panel Facilitated by Zoei Sutton, AASA Chair

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Darren Chang
Darren Chang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Sydney, and a member of the Sydney Environment Institute. Darren’s research interests broadly include interspecies relations under colonialism and global capitalism, practices of solidarity, kinship, and mutual aid across species in challenging oppressive powers, social movement theories, and multispecies justice. Through a political (and politicised) ethnography at a farmed animal sanctuary in Australia, Darren’s PhD thesis explores re-animalisation as an approach to multispecies justice.

Natalia Ciecierska-Holmes
I am passionate about exploring the connections between animals, plants, people, and the worlds we share. I completed a joint PhD at the University of Adelaide and the University of Nottingham, focusing on the social and ethical dimensions of feeding raw meat diets to dogs by plant-based eaters in the UK and Australia. Using qualitative and creative visual methods, this research explores human-canine feeding relationships and complex dynamics of care, control, and identity. I am keen to highlight animal subjectivities and expand how we think about food and ethics, not only through research but also via creative formats like comics and documentaries.

Agata Kowalewska
Dr Agata Kowalewska is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Performativity Studies, Jagiellonian University. A philosopher and artist by training, she studies spaces of human-nonhuman conflict and animal cultures from a transdisciplinary perspective. Often collaborating with biologists and employing artistic research, Agata has written on ferality, sea fire (toxic glowing dinoflagellates thriving in the dying Baltic), porcine sex and the politics of purity, hybrid beaver cultures, and bark beetles and why we should let some trees die.Andraya Stapp

Andraya Stapp
Andraya Stapp is a Māori-Dutch woman from the Ngāti Porou iwi of Aotearoa, New Zealand. She lives in Canberra on Ngunnawal Country with seven house rabbit companions who are her kin and writing and editing collaborators. Andraya is a secondary school teacher of twenty years. She completed her PhD in 2024 and currently works at the University of Canberra in the Faculty of Arts and Design.