Western education has a long tradition of anthropocentrism, centering the human and ”othering” nonhuman animals. The question is whether formal education also can provide space for addressing and resisting anthropocentrism?
Critical Animal Pedagogy
In this open lecture, Dr. Jonna Kallaste Håkansson acknowledges taken-for-granted assumptions and presumed neutrality in education leading to exploitative human-animal relations, and presents Critical Animal Pedagogy (CAP) as a counter-move.
CAP is an openly normative and critical pedagogy standing in solidarity with nonhuman animals that aims to address, disturb, and disrupt animal exploitation and enable a re-thinking and re-learning of how to live together with other species.
This lecture provides an introduction to CAP, as well as practical examples drawing upon a feminist activist ethnography, in which the researcher collaborated with teachers, students, animal rights activists, and scholars by discussing, developing, and introducing CAP in Swedish upper secondary schools. From this starting point Kallaste Håkansson discusses the (im)possibility for nonhuman animals to emerge as subjects in education, as well as the potential of taking an ”animal standpoint”.
Arne Johan Vetlesen, Professor in philosophy and George August Pound Sekkelsten, PhD candidate (both University of Oslo) will give their comments after the lecture.
Founder of network for critical animal studies
Dr. Jonna Kallaste Håkansson is affiliated with the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and one of the founders of GU-CAS (the University of Gothenburg’s Network for Critical Animal Studies in the Anthropocene).
They obtained their PhD in subject-matter education in September 2025 with a research project focused on how critical animal pedagogies (CAP) can contribute to environmental and sustainability education (ESE) by addressing, challenging, and transforming current exploitative human-animal relations and their social, ethical, and environmental ramifications.