[EASST-Eurograd] CfA – Traditional Open Panel: Could industrial animal agriculture be otherwise? (EASST 2026)

[Camille Bellet via Eurograd]

Dear colleagues,

 

We warmly invite submissions to an open panel that brings together scholars and practitioners engaging with questions of industrial animal agriculture from across STS and related fields. The panel seeks to foster dialogue across anthropology, geography, history, sociology, architecture and design, sensory studies, and neighbouring disciplines, while remaining open to contributions that productively cross, stretch, or challenge established disciplinary boundaries.

 

Our panel, “Could industrial animal agriculture be otherwise? Imaginations, enactments, and suspensions of alternatives within industrial animal agriculture”, will take place as part of the EASST 2026 Biennial Conference, held in Kraków, Poland, from 8-11 September 2026.

 

We invite contributions that critically explore how change in industrial animal agriculture emerges as “otherwise”, foregrounding human-animal relations and the more-than-human configurations through which they are enacted. We welcome papers that examine how alternative forms of knowledge, practice, care, governance, and material arrangements take shape within, alongside, or against dominant industrial logics.

 

Empirical, historical, theoretical, and creative approaches are all encouraged. This includes, but is not limited to, ethnographic and historical analyses, multimodal and sensory engagements, design- or practice-based research, speculative or experimental formats, and collaborative transdisciplinary work. Contributions may focus on specific issues — such as animal wellbeing, emissions and environmental impacts, disease management, labour conditions, or farm digitalisation — and/or on the actors and collectives tasked with improvement and transformation, including veterinarians, scientists, policymakers, farmers, and animals themselves.

 

The deadline for abstract submissions is February 28, 2026.

 

Further details can be found here: https://easst.net/conference/easst2026/programme/#18039

 

We very much look forward to receiving your submissions and to engaging in rich discussions together in Kraków!

 

With warm wishes,

Camille, Eimear and Else

Dr Camille Bellet, DVM, MPH, PhD | Honorary Research Fellow | Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM), Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, The University of Manchester | Anthropology of Life, Collège de France | Co-founder of the Non-human Animals in the Medical Humanities Network (NAMHN) | Member of Multi-Species Dementia Strategic Development Group |   @CSCBellet  |camille...@manchester.ac.uk

 

 

New OA paper | Science, Technology, & Human Values, Covalence in Cow-veillance: Sensing Technologies and Human-Animal Affinities in Dairying (2024)

 

New Chapter | The Oxford Handbook of Animal Organization Studies, Reconfiguring the Senses: Sensor Technologies and the Production of a New Sensorium in Cattle Farming (2022)

 

Limited Edition Artwork | Portable Cow Unboxing (2023)

 

Exhibition | College of Design, Iowa State University, Portable Cow (2025)