Sally Pilkington - Notes from a Biscuit Tin

Prague & Pardubice, Czech Republic

By Sally Pilkington2025, Philosophy in the Wild

What's the story?

Profiles

Programme

Gallery

As the 2022 documentary Wild Prague beautifully captured, the inhabitants of Prague share the city with many animal species. Some of them are well-hidden and require much care and attention to be spotted, but others made their home in the capital of the Czech Republic in a plain sight and do not seem to mind being observed, or even actively engage in interaction with humans. Perhaps due to this variety and uniqueness of their situations, we are still in the process of deciding which of them will take a centre stage in our endeavours. We are hoping to link these actual multispecies stories to the thinking of Mary Midgley through careful close reading at an open seminar led by an expert who will introduce her philosophy and context of her life. We will also organise a day out in the city, following in the footsteps of nonhuman inhabitants of Prague in an attempt to better understand their lives and the intricacies of human-nonhuman entanglements.

Julita Skotarska

Julita Skotarska is a PhD candidate in philosophy at Charles University in Prague. She obtained a master’s degree in philosophy from the Jagiellonian University, as well as a master’s degree in applied translation from the University of East Anglia. Between finishing her MA and beginning her PhD, she worked in translation industry, both as a freelancer and for a leading international corporation.

Dr. Petr Urban

Petr Urban is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, as well as a Project Coordinator of the Center for Environmental and Technology Ethics – Prague (CETE-P).

Thursday, 19th of February, 5-6:30 pm

Public Talk: The Grammar of Animal Oppression: Rethinking Disability and Migration

Alfonso Donoso

This talk advances a non-speciesist account of structural oppression that illuminates how contemporary social, economic, and political systems jointly organise the subordination of human and nonhuman beings. Drawing on Iris Marion Young’s theory of oppression, I argue that the harms experienced by animals cannot be understood solely as instances of cruelty or individual wrongdoing; they are products of institutional arrangements that generate vulnerability, dependence, and hierarchies of privilege. I then extend this framework to two domains that exemplify the entanglement of human and nonhuman oppression. First, I examine how ableism and capitalist norms of productivity construct certain bodies as inefficient, abnormal, or disposable, shaping the marginalisation of disabled humans alongside the technological manipulation of animals. Second, I analyse migration as a structural site where deprivation, containment, and disposability converge across species, revealing how border regimes and labour systems co-produce patterns of domination. Together, these analyses articulate a unified political account of oppression as a structure of irresponsible privilege and call for a cross-species approach to justice.

Alfonso Donoso is Associate Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, with a joint appointment at the Institute of Political Science and the Institute of Applied Ethics. He received his Ph.D from the University of York, an MLitt in Philosophy from the University of St Andrews, and a BA in Philosophy from UC Chile. In 2021 he was a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. His research focuses on animal ethics and animal politics, environmental ethics and justice, territorial rights, political obligations, and the philosophy of punishment. He has published in venues including Environmental Values, Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, and South African Journal of Philosophy.

Academic Conference Center (AKC), Husova 4a, Prague 1 - free entry.

Friday, 20th of February, 9:30 am - 5:30 pm

Workshop: Confronting Oppression with Care: Interspecies Perspectives

This workshop examines how practices of care might help address the persistent oppression of animals in contemporary societies. Care is often proposed as a way to illuminate vulnerability and shape relationships, yet its capacity to address animal oppression - both in everyday life and within political structures - remains insufficiently understood.

The workshop therefore asks what care can contribute to interspecies justice. Possible questions include, but are not limited to:

• How might caring attitudes draw attention to the lived experience of animals?
• How can care practices shift norms that have shaped human–animal relations?
• Can care serve as a form of repair for interspecies injustice?
• How might care inform political transformation and decision-making processes?

Programme

09:45–10:00
Registration & Welcome

10:00–11:00
Opening Talk: Alfonso Donoso, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
"Confronting Interspecies Oppression: Care, Solidarity, and Their Limits"
• 30-minute presentation
• 30-minute discussion (pre-read format)

11:00–11:15
Coffee Break

Session I: Care & Responsibility
11:15–11:45
Will Salkeld, The Australian National University
"Caring for Introduced Species"

11:45–12:15
Tobias Blase, TU Dortmund
"Avoidable Structural Injustice and City Pigeons: Why Should We Care?
Towards an Interspecies Role-Ideal Model of Political Responsibility"

12:15–12:45
Julita Skotarska, Charles University
"Presentation of the Philosophy in the Wild – Finding Hope in Mixed Communities Public Philosophy Project"

12:45–13:45 Lunch Break (on-site)

Session II: Translation & Cohabitation
13:45–14:15
Alexander Damianos, Kent Law School
"Ecological Translation"

14:15–14:45
Lisa Hall, Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice
"Towards an Enacted Ethic of Ecosociality: Enactive Ethics, Phenomenology, and Multispecies Cohabitation"

14:45–15:00 Coffee Break

Session III: Care & Profession
15:00–15:30
Rebecca Swan, University of Brighton
Title: TBD (Topic: Care at the Veterinary Encounter)
15:30–16:00
Nina Collin, Centre for Ethics, University of Pardubice
"If Not You, Who? The (Un)Caring Animal Ethics Teacher"
16:00–16:15
Joint Reflection on Workshop Outcomes

After the Workshop
Philosophy in the Wild outdoor activity to see nutrias at the Vltava River
(approx. 90 minutes; optional)
From ~18:30: Dinner (self-paid)
Location TBD

Institute of Czech Literature of the CAS, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1

Anyone interested in joining without giving a presentation is warmly welcome to do so; in that case, registration is kindly requested here by 15 February 2026.

What's the story?

Profiles

Programme

Gallery

What happens when we pay attention to non-human animals, and how can the fruits of that attention be expressed? Combining Midgley’s and Murdoch’s insights on poetry, attention, and the imagination, we will take a trip to Pardubice’s animal sanctuary Pohádková Zahrada (Fairytale Garden) to spend some time in attentive engagement with animals. After some exercises guided by the philosophy of attention, we will sit down among the animals for a poetry workshop, using different structural and thematic prompts. The poems may be shared freely by participants without any demand that they do so, and will be followed by an open discussion about the experience of attending to and with animals and of animal attention, exploring the specificities of a context where animals are, unusually in our society, not used for human purposes but free to pursue their own lives – albeit in a human-controlled setting. This experience will be followed by a panel conversation among some invited speakers at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies of the University of Pardubice.

Dr Silvia Caprioglio Panizza is Senior Researcher at the CORE project, Department of Philosophy, University of Pardubice. She is the author of The Ethics of Attention: Engaging the Real with Iris Murdoch and Simone Weil (Routledge 2022) and of a number of papers on attention, Murdoch, Weil, and animal ethics. She has co-edited and translated Simone Weil’s literary works (Bloomsbury 2019 and 2024)

Dr. Laura Candiotto is Associate Professor in Philosophy at the Centre for Ethics of the University of Pardubice, Czech Republic. Her main research field is philosophy of emotions. She leads the project "Vicious Epistemic Cultures" founded by the Czech Science Foundation and the Research Team “Loving is caring” at the Upce. She is also a member of the CORE project (WP7: Environmental Emotions in the Anthropocene). As a member of Mind and Life Europe, she is contributing to the development of an enactive ethics of sense-making grounded on affects as what disclose existential concerns and values, especially regarding environmental issues and shared sentience. For her publications, see centreforethics.upce.cz/en/doc-laura-candiotto-phd

The PhD students Lisa Hall and Nina Colin will also take part to the planned event. They are both working on animal and environmental ethics and education.

Galway, Ireland

By Sally Pilkington2025, Philosophy in the Wild

What's the story?

Profiles

Programme

For most humans, picturing wild animals conjures images of packs of lions prowling along the savannah or exotic birds filling the skies above a tropical rainforest. Our local wild animal neighbours are often left out of this imaginative landscape and are overlooked as rather mundane beings unworthy of our attention. However, these local neighbours are an integral part of our urban ecosystems. Our goal is to encourage humans to adjust their imaginative abilities to recognise and appreciate the significance of the ‘mundane’ wild animals in their respective communities.

We explore the ethical and philosophical significance of attention to non-charismatic species – such as pigeons, seagulls, bugs and rodents – within human-dominated environments. We focus on the overlooked multispecies community of the Galway University campus and encourage greater attention and care towards all its inhabitants. The ‘Philosophy in the Wild’ garden on campus which acts as a space to connect with these non-charismatic species is the central hub of our research. The space also acts as an example of what it means to coexist, live and learn as a human member of what Mary Midgely would call a mixed community. From cleaning bird poop off benches and insects crawling on books to herring-gulls loudly interrupting meetings, we learn to adjust and shift in relation to the activities of other beings around us. Overall, we aim to encourage a reimagination of the campus as a co-inhabited space of care and complexity that provides hope for how we may create more spaces of coexistence that benefit all members of this mixed community.

Team Ireland is part of AIRE - an innovative approach to scholarship:

In response to contemporary individualism — reinforced by political, academic, and economic systems — AIRE challenges the assumption that meaningful scholarship must centre on individual authorship, competition, and institutional prestige. They work as a collective, embracing a hybrid, collaborative form of subjectivity. The aim is not only to demonstrate that research can emerge through shared inquiry, but to actively embody and promote this alternative model of academic work.

Some more information about the individuals nonetheless below.

Michela Dianetti

Michela Dianetti is a lecturer in Philosophy and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Galway. Her PhD research developed a literary ethics of attention grounded in the philosophies of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, applying them to the literary work of Elsa Morante. She facilitates philosophical inquiries for children in Galway primary schools, as well as for young adults and older persons.

insight-centre.org/our-team/michela-dianetti/

Lucy Elvis

Lucy Elvis is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Galway, a founder of Curo Thinking for Communities a not-for-profit that focuses on empowering groups to think philosophically together in non-formal educational contexts from music festivals to art galleries and libraries and an art writer. Her research and teaching focuses on the power of art and of philosophical thinking to enrich human life.

universityofgalway.ie/our-research/people/history-and-philosophy/lucyelvis/

Chiara Li Mandri

Chiara Li Mandri is a PhD candidate at the University of Palermo, Italy. Her current research draws on Giacomo Leopardi to develop an innovative educational method to raise awareness of contemporary climate and ecological disruptions, emphasising the role of poetry and art as essential educational tools.

Nora Ward

Nora Ward is a lecturer in the philosophy department at the University of Galway. She received her BA and MA from the University of Galway and her Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. Her research focus is on environmental ethics and philosophy, with a particular interest in ecological attention, rewilding, and ecofeminism.

universityofgalway.ie/colleges-and-schools/arts-social-sciences-and-celtic-studies/history-philosophy/disciplines-centres/philosophy/people/noraward/

Week 1 – Beauty, Attention, and the Non-Charismatic

4 March, 11:00–12:00

THB-G010

We explore how aesthetic preferences shape ethical concern. Why do we notice some species and ignore others, such as pigeons, insects, or “weeds”?

Week 2 – Language, Perception, and Reimagining Experience

11 March, 11:00–12:00

THB-1001 The Bridge Meeting Room

We reflect on how language and perception shape how we understand the more-than-human world, and imagine less human-centred ways of experiencing our shared environment.

Week 3 – Multispecies Poetry (Closing Session)

18 March, 11:00–12:00 and 17:30–18:30

THB-1001 The Bridge Meeting Room

A collective creative session to compose a multispecies poem together, which will be featured in an exhibition in September.

Find out more on how to participate HERE!

Newcastle upon Tyne

By Sally Pilkington2025, Philosophy in the Wild

Monday 15th June | 6:00pm to 8:00pm | The Lit & Phil 23 Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 1SE

Join us for an evening of philosophical reflection on the role that poetry can play in connecting us with non-human animals and the environment. Inspired by the writings of Newcastle-based philosopher Mary Midgley, we present insights from the global multi-species poetry experiment, Philosophy in the Wild: Finding Hope in Mixed Communities.

The evening will begin with a short introduction from the project’s director, poet-philosopher Dr Mara Daria Cojocaru, who will explain the concept of multispecies poetry and share poems co-authored with bats, bison and eider ducks.

After that, there will be two presentations. Dr Karen Simecek will talk about poetry as a site of community and explore the limits of felt connections to others through a poem. Dr Vid Simoniti will consider the claim that art is a form of worldmaking, and query what it would mean for art to help us reframe our relationship to the climate crisis.

After the talks there will be a chance to get a glass of wine or soft drink, before joining us for a roundtable discussion and Q&A.

For more about the event and speakers, visit The Lit & Phil event page.

Notes from a Biscuit Tin

Author: Sally Pilkington