CFP - Animals History at CHAM Conference 2026

Chair:

Nina Vieira, CHAM-NOVA FCSH

Carla Vieira, CHAM-NOVA FCSH

Catarina Simões, CHAM-NOVA FCSH

 The interdisciplinary field of Animal Studies is bringing forth a growing scholarly interest in the subject of human-animal relationships across the humanities and social sciences at large. Animal-centred approaches argue for the vital role of nonhuman animals in people’s individual and collective lives, acknowledging historical entanglements of mutual dependency between human and nonhuman actors.

This panel aims to discuss how animal movement shaped human practices and ways of life throughout different historical periods, and in diverse cultural and geographical contexts. In one hand, debating the importance of the ecological movement of animals, i.e. their natural activity and mobility in shaping people subsistence, settlement and wealth, animal management practices, transhumance, or animal domestication; on the other hand, highlighting the impact of the forced movement of animals, namely their displacement, circulation and involvement in regional and global trade networks.

We encourage the submission from scholars at different career levels, from history and archaeology, but also literature and the arts, in the following topics, or others that fall within the scope of this panel:

• energy generated by the movement of animals;
• animal-human historical migrations;
• animal transport and transport through animals;
• diasporic thinking applied to animals;
• circulation of preserved species, animal body parts and by-products;
• spatial analysis and digital humanities.

Keywords: Animal History; Animal Studies; Multispecies Entanglements; Migration; Diaspora