Lead supervisor:
Dr Christopher Bear 
Start date: October 2023
Award: General
Subject Pathway:
Human Geography
Thematic Cluster:
Place, Environment and Development Cluster
Interspecies cities: spatial governance practices, dilemmas and future
The research intends to focus on the entanglements and tensions of human-animal interactions in the urban-nature context, and attempt to explore and understand any potential relationships between humans and animals in contemporary interspecies cities.
Featuring the mega city Shenzhen in China, this research will investigate urban ecological government strategies and practices in its rapid urbanization process, how it selectively called on small but neglected animals, typically Frogs and Black Soldier Flies to be involved in the reshaping the heterogeneous urban nature, and meanwhile intervene in the daily life of human emotional betting and abjection, which thus stimulate and present another kind of interactive landscape. Unlike past emphasis on highly selective animal subjects, ‘cold-blooded animals’ like amphibians (frogs) and insects (black soldier flies) not only shaped into ‘multiple bodies’, but also undergo a spectrum shift, co-producing experiences from care to abjection in daily urban interaction with human. This response to the trend in the pet economy, local culture transformation and ecological protection, challenging the established notion of subjectification of existing animals and interspecies interactions.