List of contributors
p. 335-342
Texte intégral
1SAYAN BANERJEE
Sayan trained in both natural sciences and social sciences during his bachelor’s and master’s degree studies respectively. He is deeply interested in human-wildlife relations, interdisciplinary conservation science and socio-ecological studies of Indian forestry. His various projects have documented indigenous hunting in Nagaland, explored gendered implications of human-elephant interactions, and identified the nature and patterns of community participation in wildlife conservation projects, all in northeastern India. He is currently a doctoral student in the Animal Behaviour and Cognition Programme at the National Institute of Advanced Studies and is also affiliated with Manipal Academy of Higher Education in Bangalore, India, investigating behavioural interactions between humans and wild elephants, and their political implications in the non-protected, mixed-use landscapes of Assam, once again in Northeast India. This study hopes to integrate concepts and methods from animal ecology and behavioural sciences as well as the political ecology of human communities in these threatened landscapes.
2PHILIPPE COSTE
Philippe served as a nurse and lived in Laos between 1999 and 2010. As a self-taught photographer, he became interested in human-elephant relationships in the context of Laotian village life. Numerous stays in the province of Sayabouly with mahouts and their elephants allowed him to produce a series of images on the astonishing collaboration between men and animals in logging operations. He also took advantage of this time to bring his lens closer to elephants, often from only a few centimeters, and let his gaze get lost in the details and textures of the world’s largest land mammal. This unusual intimacy birthed a series of strange and poetic images.
3JENNIFER A. H. CRAWLEY
Jennifer is an ecologist and evolutionary biologist whose PhD investigated mahout-elephant relationships in elephants working in the timber industry in Myanmar. Her research focused on the shifts within the mahout profession in recent years and the consequences these changes have on the elephants in their care, investigating a wide range of responses linked to their behaviour, physiology and survival. She completed her PhD in Turku, Finland and is currently planning her next steps in Stockholm, Sweden.
4LAUREN. A. EVANS
Lauren has worked in conservation, always in an interdisciplinary way, in East Africa for 15 years, where conflicts in conservation are glaring and often uncomfortable. Lauren’s PhD and postdoctoral research with Bill Adams at the University of Cambridge looked at the political ecology of electrified ‘elephant’ fences in Laikipia, Kenya and the agency of elephants as political actors in conservation conflicts. Lauren directed the conservation science department for Space for Giants for six years. Lauren is now a practitioner in nonviolent communication and conflict resolution. She has founded and is directing an organisation, Human Nature, that works to support conservation to better understand and engage with social complexity.
5TONI FROHOFF
Toni is the founder and science director of TerraMar Research (TerramarResearch.org). She is an ethologist and behavioural biologist who has specialized in cetaceans—and more recently, elephants—for over 30 years. She has distinctive expertise in both studying and addressing the psychological wellbeing of cetaceans and elephants in captivity and in the wild with an emphasis on the impacts of human interaction. Her writings include her most recent book on dolphins with Yale University Press. Toni continues to consult for a variety of private, government, and non-profit organizations where her work has contributed to the revision and implementation of management and legislation protecting animals in captivity and in the wild in more than a dozen countries.
6ANANDI GANDHI
Anandi is a PhD student in cultural anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is inspired by stories of coexistence in Eastern Thailand. Her approach combines theory and methods from multispecies anthropology, ecology, and agriculture. The last 12 years of her academic training in philosophy, ecology, and anthropology and employment in agriculture and conservation non-profit organizations have been motivated by the question: how is industrial agriculture impacting and transforming farmer lives, indigenous lifeways, and megafauna survival in Asia? Growing up in India, where elephants are revered, has instilled in her deep respect and awe for these intelligent beings. Working with marginalized farmers has made her empathetic towards the precarity of livelihoods in the face of market pressures and elephant incursions. This dual attunement motivates her research of Asian elephant and farmer lifeways undergoing continuous undoing in the Anthropocene.
7PAUL G. KEIL
Paul is a researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic, and honorary postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie University, Australia. His regional and ethnographic expertise is in Northeast India and Australia, with research interests informed by more-than-human anthropology, cognitive science, and environmental humanities. Keil has published on a variety of human interactions with dogs, wild pigs, and elephants. His analytical interest lies in interspecies teamwork, shifting perspectives towards animals, recreational hunting, co-engineered ecologies, uncertainty in human-animal relations, and sharing place with charismatic wildlife, including several papers on human-elephant relations in Northeast India. Keil is currently finalising a monograph based on his PhD research, an ethnography of sharing worlds with elephants in Assam. The book examines coexistence beyond conflict, attending to the mundane and multifaceted ways humans and elephants are in conversation across a single landscape, and the mutual vulnerability experienced by both communities.
8NICOLAS LAINE
Nicolas is a social-anthroplogist, research fellow at the UMR Paloc, a multidisciplinary mixed research unit from the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) and the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN) in Paris. A specialist in society-environment relations, he has conducted numerous field studies in India, Laos and Thailand. He has published a dozen articles on human-elephant relations, and a monograph: Living and Working with giants. A multispecies Ethnography of the Khamti and elephants in Northeast India (MNHN, 2020). His current work focuses on human-animal relationships, health (One Health), and local knowledge (ethnoveterinary practices). These subjects question the complex links between biodiversity-society-health and open reflections on the co-production of knowledge (expert/profane, human/nonhuman) in South and Southeast Asia. He currently serves as a member of the IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group.
9TECKWYN LIM
Teckwyn is an independent scientist who studies the relationship between people and nature. He wrote his doctorate dissertation on the history of elephants and people in the Malaysian rainforest. Teckwyn is an honorary Associate Professor at the School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Nottingham Malaysia. He also works with University of Malaya, where he is a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, as well as a member of the Center for Malaysian Indigenous Studies. Teckwyn is founder and managing director of the research and consultancy company, Resource Stewardship Consultants (RESCU).
10SRIKUMAR M. MENON
Srikumar is an architect specialising in ancient and early architecture of the Indian subcontinent within the Heritage, Science and Society Programme, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore, India. Along with ancient Indian knowledge systems, Srikumar’s academic interests focus on prehistoric monuments like ashmounds and megaliths, as well as later monuments, such as stupas and temples. Currently, Srikumar is engaged in efforts to understand the evolution of principles of construction and stone-working in early temple architecture and the practice of architecture in Early Historic to Medieval Periods in India, including tracking early artisans of ancient India. Depiction of animals in early art associated with monuments is an aspect of his work which deeply fascinates him.
11VIVEK MENON
Vivek is a leading Indian wildlife conservationist, environmental commentator, author, photographer and policy think tank with a passion for elephants. Founder of five environmental and nature conservation organisations, he spearheads Wildlife Trust of India as its Founder, Executive Director since 1998. He is the current Deputy Chair of IUCN-SSC, Chair-Asian Elephant SG, Member-SSC Steering Committee and Conservation Translocation SG with over 25 years serving on various Specialist Groups. He is the winner of 2019 Clark R. Bavin Award, 2018 Whitley Continuation Award, 2017 Round Glass Samsara Lifetime Achievement Award and 2001 Rufford Award. Mr Menon is the author of ten wildlife books including the bestselling Indian Mammals- A Field Guide, scores of technical reports and more than 250 articles and also serves on a number of governmental and non-governmental boards and committees.
12HANNAH S. MUMBY
Hannah is a behavioural ecologist, associate professor at University of Hong Kong and leads the Applied Behavioural Ecology and Conservation Lab, affiliated with the School for Biological Science and Department of Politics and Public Administration. Her study system involves large mammals, including humans. Her book Elephants: birth, death and family in the lives of the giants was published in 2020 (HarperCollins). Hannah was a Branco Weiss Society in Science Fellow at the University of Cambridge, College For Life Sciences Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Fulbright Scholar at Colorado State University and Honorary Fellow at the Centre for African Ecology at the University of Witwatersrand. In 2020 she won the Christopher Barnard Award for Outstanding New Investigator awarded by the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
13SHUBHRA NAYAR
Shubhra is a co-founder and designer at The Real Elephant Collective, with a profession in design for performance and larger-than-life puppetry. She holds a degree in textile design from the National Institute of Design in India, and an MA in Theatre Design from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, in the UK.
14REDEMPTA NJERI NDUGUTA
Redempta is a passionate environmental and wildlife steward based in Kenya whose main interest is the use of technology in conservation and research to enhance people’s coexistence with wildlife. She holds a bachelor’s degree in botany and zoology from the University of Nairobi and is currently pursuing a master’s degree at Kenyatta University. She previously worked at Space for Giants as a GIS and Data Coordinator, and a Researcher at Kenya Wildlife Service. Her main contributions have been in the improvement of human-wildlife conflict mitigation solutions, habitat protection, connectivity and wildlife criminal justice support through court data analysis in Uganda, Zambia, Namibia, Angola and Botswana. She has standardised data collection of over a thousand individuals (rangers, scouts, fencers, wildlife crime court monitors, social scientists and elephants). This has led to a great improvement in data management, ecological monitoring and evidence-based conservation interventions in these countries.
15ELIZABETH ORIEL
As a postdoctoral researcher at Aarhus University, Denmark, in Environmental Humanities and Media Studies, Elizabeth studies relational patterns among plants, humans and other animals, and examines the role of language in supporting ecocultural resilience. Her PhD research (Bloomsbury Scholar) on human-elephant conflict in Sri Lanka learned how farmers and elephants negotiate a charged environment and how plants’ and elephants’ lifeways and symbiotic patterns are instructive towards reducing conflict. She has studied perceptions of wellbeing for other animals, as well as implications of distributed personhood outside the human realm. She founded Storiedseas.org, and is developing Biocultural Field Guides to riparian woodlands in various countries, exploring plants’ multitudinous abilities and gifts within the living system. She has also worked in climate change adaptation planning in the US.
16KHATIJAH RAHMAT
Khatijah is a PhD candidate at the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and politics from Edinburgh University and an MFA from The Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University. Her work explores the intersections between animal geography, critical time studies and science and technology studies. Her current research focuses on time’s relationship with animal subjects. Focusing on the Asian elephant, she studies how conceptions of time influences human observation and the epistemic predicates that guide human knowledge practices, unpacking how faithfully they serve or constrain animal expressions of agency.
17NIGELS ROTHFELS
Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Nigel is a historian of animals and culture, he is the author of Savages and Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo (2002), a history of the origins of naturalistic displays in zoos, and Elephant Trails: A History of Animals and Cultures (2021), which traces how ideas about elephants have changed over recent centuries. He is also the co-author, with Dick Blau, of Elephant House (2015), a study of elephants and keepers at the Oregon Zoo, editor of the multidisciplinary collection Representing Animals (2002), and general editor of the Penn State University Press book series Animalibus: Of Animals and Cultures. His current research focuses on butterfly collecting in the late 19th century.
18JACOB SHELL
Jacob is an Associate Professor of Geography and Urban Studies at Temple University, USA. He is author of Giants of the Monsoon Forest: Living and Working with Elephants (WW Norton, 2019) and Transportation and Revolt: Pigeons, Mules, Canals, and the Vanishing Geographies of Subversive Mobility (MIT, 2015). His cartographic work can be found at https://jacobshell.carbonmade.com.
19DEBORAH SCHRIJVERS
Deborah is a PhD candidate from the School of English, Drama and Film, and part of the Environmental Humanities from the University College of Dublin. Her research focuses on decolonising extinction narratives in spaces such as the zoo, the natural history museum and the rainforest, with an emphasis on gender and race through analyses of contemporary, transnational literature, film and art. Her research interests include critical animal studies, vegan studies, gender and sexuality studies, critical race theory and black studies.
20ANINDYA “RANA” SINHA
Anindya is primarily based at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore, India but holds adjunct faculty positions at ten other research and teaching institutions in India and in the United Kingdom. Notwithstanding his earlier research in the fields of classical genetics, biochemical genetics and molecular biology, his primary research interests, over the last three decades, have been in animal behavioural ecology, cognitive ethology, evolutionary biology, population and behavioural genetics, classical animal studies and the applied philosophy of biology, cognitive science and conservation studies largely involving primates, elephants and other nonhuman species. His current research in natural philosophies, other-than-human studies, art heritage and performance studies involve ethno-ethnographic explorations of nonhuman synurbisation, human-nonhuman relations and the lived experiences of nonhumans, promising unique insights into more-than-human lifeworlds of the past, today and in the future.
21NISHANT M. SRINIVASAIAH
Nishant is presently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He also serves as a Senior Research Fellow at the Foundation for Ecological Research Advocacy and Learning and an Honorary Research Associate with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, both in Bangalore. With an early interest in understanding how large mammals have managed to adapt and survive in rapidly transforming human-dominated landscapes, he has been observing elephant populations and individuals, both in the wild and in captivity, for about fifteen years now. He has a doctorate in the behavioural ecology of male Asian elephants in a changing peri-urban environment from the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. His current work involves improving human-elephant relationships in the wild, particularly through nonhuman-centric design initiatives. Nishant is also a member of the IUCN SSC Asian Elephant Specialist Group.
22TARSH THEKAELARA
Tarsh is a researcher-conservationist interested in more human inclusive models of nature conservation. He co-founded The Shola Trust in 2008, The Real Elephant Collective (a non-profit company) in 2015, and is a founding member of the www.coexistenceconsortium.com and adjunct faculty at the TransDisciplinary University. His other area of research and intervention includes the plant species Lantana camara, looking at how communities can use the invasive plant in various ways. He is particularly interested in how people and elephants share space, and finding ways to minimise negative interactions between them. Most of his work is in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (across Tamilnadu, Kerala and Karnataka) but he is also keen on promoting human-wildlife coexistence at more national and global scales.
23THOMAS R. TRAUTMANN
Professor Emeritus of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Thomas has written on ancient Indian history, the anthropological study of kinship, the history of Orientalist scholarship on India, and environmental history. His most recent book is Elephants and Kings: An Environmental History (2014) on the domestication and management of elephants over the last three thousand years.
24SREEDHAR VIJAYAKRISHANAN
Sreedhar Vijayakrishnan, a wildlife biologist, has had research interests, over the last decade, in behavioural ecology, wildlife endocrinology, population ecology, movement ecology, and human dimensions of wildlife conservation. Growing up watching elephants and listening to never-ending elephant tales, Sreedhar developed a deep passion for the species, which motivated him to choose a career in conservation biology, closely following and observing them, both in the wild and in captivity. He has been particularly interested in understanding behavioural adaptations by elephants in human-modified landscapes and has extensively studied them in the Western Ghats and the Western Himalaya. He is also interested in human-captive elephant relationships, as shaped by the rich cultural history of elephant captivity in the state of Kerala and the traditional elephant-keeping practices of the Malasar communities of the Anamalai hills in southern India.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Creative Commons - Attribution - Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale - Pas de Modification 4.0 International - CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
Composing Worlds with Elephants
Interdisciplinary dialogues
Nicolas Lainé, Paul G. Keil et Khatijah Rahmat (dir.)
2023
Voix végétales
Diversité, résistances et histoires de la forêt
Joana Cabral de Oliveira, Marta Amoroso, Ana Gabriela Morim de Lima et al. (dir.) Michel Riaudel (trad.)
2023