Who we are

Since its founding in 2017, ASRI has provided an interdisciplinary research hub at the University of Victoria for all research that promotes critical thinking on interspecies relations. Events throughout the academic year include an ongoing Distinguished Lecture Series, an annual Graduate Writing Conference, and Film Screenings with Discussion Panels.

ASRI brings together students, faculty, independent scholars, and community members to consider and debate how anthropocentrism and speciesism shape our societies and communities. There are many ways that humans and humanity imagine, represent, interact with, and are constituted by animals and animality. The Initiative seeks to foster understanding of the complexity and depth of human-animal relations as well as how we can transition at local and global levels to a less violent, more harmonious interspecies society.