Marie Leth-Espensen

Research areas

• Human-Animal Relations, Multispecies Ethnography
• Animal Protection, Law and Nature, Anthropocentrism
• The Politics of Care, Care Ethics

Current research

I am a sociologist and qualitative researcher with a particular interest in human-animal relations.

In my Ph.D. research, I explore how legal animal protection shapes standardised practices of care in the context of industrial farming.

In the research, I explore how nonhuman animals become legible as subjects worthy of protection within the current framework of animal welfare. How does a politics of suffering play out in the context of agricultural control and management of nonhuman life?

The project includes fieldwork research performed at farmed animal sanctuaries in rural Denmark, exploring the everyday life and care at the sanctuary. For this study, I rely on a methodological design combining multispecies ethnography with legal geography.

Within the socio-legal tradition, I take inspiration from previous studies that cultivate ethnographic sensibilities concerning the role and place of law in everyday life. I am particularly interested in addressing the following:

• How law and space are imbricated (legal geography)
• How the law is shaping and defining multispecies communities, landscapes and societies (more-than-human law, multispecies ethnography)
• Pluralist approaches to the law

I am a member of the Lund University Critical Animal Studies Network (LUCASN). The network aims to act as a platform and an interdisciplinary hub at Lund University for scholars and students interested in Critical Animal Studies. For more information about the network, see www.kom.lu.se/lucasn.

Read more about Marie Leth-Espensen's research project in the article below.