Paul Keil

from an article; not a reviewer!

Its been about 2 years since we published our multidisciplinary edited volume on human-elephant relations. I'm still impressed with its rich, diverse set of chapters, and the choice to publish OA with IRD

Link to book here -- horizon.documentation.ird.fr/exl-doc/plei...

Ghost Elephants – first-look review Werner Herzog peers into the Angolan highlands in search of colossal elephants, and ends up gently reflecting on the ghosts of human longing.

Unusual choice shooting with NatGeo, but I'll watch it because

1) elephants
2) Herzog

lwlies.com/venice-film-...

Looking forward to opening up the new academic year with a talk by Fenna Smits

Register (in person or online) here:

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Juan DABEZIES | Professor (Full) | Doctor of Philosophy | Universidad de la República de Uruguay, Montevideo | UdelaR | Centro Universitario de la Región Este - CURE | Research profile I work on issues of multispecies ethnography, more-than-human relations, conservation and biosecurity, local ecological knowledge, heritagization, and archaeology. I am Phd. in anthropology and a prof...

So Juan Martin Dabezies has pretty much been pumping out research related to wild pigs and hunting in Ururguay. And its pretty good stuff. And i'm a bit jealous. But mostly happy to read his prolific work

www.researchgate.net/profile/Juan...

Instead of live rabbits that were "too expensive and time consuming" there are now fluffy toys in a glass box that emits heat and smell that mimics a rabbit

Robot rabbits in Florida battle to control invasive Burmese pythons in Everglades They look, move and even smell like the kind of furry Everglades marsh rabbit a Burmese python would love to eat

roborabbit lures in Florida everglades for Burmese pythons

abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory...

Looking forward to opening up the new academic year with a talk by Fenna Smits

Register (in person or online) here:

forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/Respon...

Postdoctoral Research Fellow Multispecies Justice Full time, fixed term for 2 years Opportunity to conduct research on Multispecies justice Academic Level B Base Salary from $127,436 + 17% superannuation About the opportunity The School of Social and...

2 year Postdoctoral Research Fellow Multispecies Justice, under the supervision of Professor Danielle Celermajer, at University of Sydney

usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/USYD_E...

Paul G. Keil, "The Presence of Elephants: Shared Lives and Landscapes in Assam" (Routledge, 2024) New Books in Animal Studies · Episode

Which also prompted me to listen for the first time to this podcast which I recorded 5 months ago now, speaking about my book.

Was surprised I didn't sound like the disastrous mess I imagined myself to be (despite getting a tiny bit lost half way through)

open.spotify.com/episode/4DpR...

The presence of elephants: Sharing lives and landscapes in Assam By Paul G. Keil, London: Routledge. 2024. pp. viii + 173. ISBN: 978‐1‐003‐40298‐5 Click on the article title to read more.

Was pretty happy a few weeks back, to come across the first review of my book - 'a moving and unsettling depiction of marginalised ways of life' - by Katherine Fletcher in the Australian Journal Of Anthropology

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

How fungi see the world: fungal photoreceptors and their role in the regulation of fungal biology | Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews SUMMARYFungi use light as a signal for the regulation of development, to guide the growth of reproductive structures, and to protect the fungal cell from DNA damage produced by light and UV radiation....

"Fungi can see and react to a wide range of colors." journals.asm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

What is the experience of foraging really like? Wondering what it means to forage? Foraging isn't just about food – it’s a chance to understand the ecosystems that we live in, and appreciate the true value of ingredients.

Did a great urban foraging workshop with Diego many moons ago, which left a lasting impression

www.sbs.com.au/food/article...

Rock climbing as lithic ethnography : Animacy, aesthetics, and deep time | HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory: Vol 15, No 2 What does it mean for scholars to engage rocks ethnographically? And how is ethnography redefined back by an encounter with lithics? Although rock has long lingered in the background of sociocultural ...

Resonated with this take on aesthetics

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10....

The biggest take away of this article for me is the need to push back against absolute perspectives on subjects like hunters & feral pigs by rendering them more fairly & keeping their potentialities uncertain. You can read the article here in PDF or html here

humanimalia.org/article/view...

While Pig-pig eluded the common trajectory of feral pigs in Aust. living in this unauthorised multispecies home, she eventually could not escape the dominant concept of her kind's killability.

The story has an unfortunate and ambivalent ending. The whole article is ambivalent, I guess.

She forged a curious set of multispecies relations in this home, relations the hunter was obligated to respect (but also from a storytelling perspective, worth retelling for the sake of it!).

To a degree Pig-pig escaped his power to dictate, and partly why she hadn't yet been made into dinner

Their relationship continuously eluded my narrow concepts of hunters and feral pigs, about who they are and who could be & be with. A feral relationship in a domestic space!

Pig-pig was also a charismatic and surprising character that charmed even the hunter despite his best intentions.

Writing this paper was partly the need to make sense of the contradictions of a pig hunter living with a feral-looking pig

It was also about making sense of the fact that she existed and was given the space to become Pig-pig, where in Australia most human-feral pig relations end in her kind's death

The backbone of my article is a series of interviews with a hunter and an encounter with a young sow who lived with the man (captured as a wild living piglet). She was named Pig-pig and was (is? looks like?) a feral pig

There is a picture of Pig-pig below taking a bath

I had a paper published in Humanimalia last week, called the "Feral at Home". I'm chuffed about the timing because it joins a great selection of other papers

I'll add a few more details about the paper below, but shoutout to all the great & hard work of the journal editors. And for keeping it OA

Reintroduction of Przewalski's horses in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia, 1990s. Transported by aircraft, arriving in crates. Photo by ITG, Ruth Baumgartner.

1/ Happy to share that my article “Beyond Homecoming: The Reintroduction of Seven Przewalski’s Mares in the Gobi Desert” has been published in Environmental Humanities.

It is the story of seven mares flown from Australian zoos to Mongolia’s Gobi Desert in the 1990s
doi.org/10.1215/2201... #envhist

A warning to the young: just say no to AI The substitution of Large Language Models for genuine thinking is a generational threat. At stake is no less than the life of the mind.

I don't agree with everything in this article, but I do agree with this:
"The act of writing the thing is the same thing as the thinking of it. If you can’t write it, you haven’t actually thought it." And AI allows us to 'not' think.
engelsbergideas.com/essays/a-war...

#academicsky #ai #teaching

Out Now: Humanimalia 15.2!
Featuring timely essays on human–animal entanglements, including 🐴 a taxidermied horse in London, 🐗 a feral pig in Australia, 🐐 “happy” goats in Italy, 🐾 robot dogs in Gaza, 🐦 pheasants in NL, and 🐑 sheepdogs in the UK.
🔓 OA here: humanimalia.org/issue/view/1...

A great ethnographic study of the "Unexpected Relations of a 'Feral Pig'" by @paulgkeil.bsky.social in the new issue of @humanimalia.bsky.social humanimalia.org/article/view...

Thanks Christos! :)

Made my morning

Hello Hannah! :) thank you very much!

(And a 2nd thank you, as I didn't know it was out!)

The life of microplastic: how fragments move through plants, insects, animals – and you Microplastics have been found in the placentas of unborn babies, the depths of the Mariana Trench, the summit of Everest and the organs of Antarctic penguins. But how do they travel through the world,...

www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...