Animate

Animate began in 2016 as a small research group of four people, funded by the Emil Aaltonen Foundation. The initial project focused on bringing forward children’s perspectives on the significant animals in their lives. Over the years, we have grown into a multidisciplinary team of more than ten researchers from the human, social, and natural sciences. Currently, we investigate how diverse human–animal, human-environment relations contribute to biodiversity loss.

We collaborate with citizens, environmental organizations, and artists from various fields. Our understanding of multispecies coexistence has been enriched by contributions from e.g., a dancer, a performance and visual artists, a master of speculative fiction, and a practitioner of bioart. Through these transdisciplinary approaches, we explore how human existence and the definition of humanity are shaped through relationships with other animals; especially those that are overlooked, considered harmful, or otherwise marginalized. In doing so, we highlight the importance of multispecies justice as a central theme in education and human growth.

Our current research includes considering homes as sites of domestic biodiversity and multispecies coexistence, exploring the roles and fates of other animals in scientific knowledge production—from entomology to laboratory animal research—and investigating the possibilities and forms of fellow feelings, or multispecies empathy. We also conduct proof-of-concept studies and collaborate with diverse stakeholders (e.g., the Martha Association / Martat and the Finnish Nature League / Luontoliitto) to help bring perspectives of multispecies justice into practice. The Animate approach combines philosophy of education with ecological citizen science, human–animal studies, and environmental social sciences, using multispecies (non-anthropocentric) and creative qualitative methods.