About CAT

CAT Blog Overview

This research blog reports on ongoing research updates from our work on the CAT Project, which is funded by the Research Council of Finland. As the project progresses (it runs from 2026 to 2031), we will update on fieldwork, results, and publications, and we will also occasionally discuss issues that arise, as they arise.

What is CAT?

CAT is short for "Crosslocating Animal Transgressions". A summary of what it does: There are changes occurring in European peoples' relations and coexistence with animals, and CAT studies the significance of these changes. Some wild animals are now moving into people's places, whilst elsewhere, other animals are disappearing from their old places. Simultaneously, people are attempting to re-wild degraded landscapes, whilst livestock farming and transport tries to stop any contact of wild and domestic animals so as to control infectious disease. And everywhere, microbes both cause disease but also live symbiotically with their hosts in microbiota. CAT will conduct ethnographic research in the European region, focusing on moments when animals are understood to be transgressing their boundaries or having their boundaries transgressed by people. Combined with current life science knowledge of changes in the spatial coexistence of animals and people, this will provide a new approach to understand the diverse ways that people's interactions with animals are changing.

Team

The leader of the project is Sarah Green, who is a Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki. She is a specialist on location and place, particualrly in the European and Mediterranean regions. In recent years, she has focused her attention on the borders between people and other living things, especially animals. In the first year, she will be the main researcher in this project, and will be joined by two other senior researchers in 2027-2028.

In addition, there are a number of researchers who are collaborating in CAT, and their names and expertise will be listed here soon.

Publications & Interesting links

This is where any relevant publications and any interesting links to stories about ongoing debates or conflicts the relations of people and animals will be listed. If you have any good information, especially about any part of Europe, please use the Contact Us tab to tell us about it. We may list those tips here after they have been fact checked and moderated.