Currently, there is some engagement with animal studies and posthumanism from a trans studies perspective, and there is some acknowledgement of trans studies from a critical animal studies perspective. However, critical animal studies’ engagement with trans studies remains scarce and at times theoretically shallow, in that it draws on trans studies discourses in a tendentially superficial way. Trans studies’ discussion of nonhuman animals does not always conceptualize their position in critical (political) terms.

With this symposium we aim to foster a dialogue between trans studies and critical animal studies. This is beneficial for both fields: CAS can gain important perspectives on a so far under-theorised axis of domination (one that plays an important role in current processes of fascisation and must thus be part of comprehensive political analyses). Trans studies can expand on its current involvement with animal studies, adding a more critical stance towards human-animal relationships and an all too peaceful notion of ‘entanglement’, which considers the material conditions of animal struggles .

We also aim to conceptualize and foster political solidarity. In the current age of authoritarianism, both trans studies and critical animal studies are under threat. Furthermore, under the rise of right-wing extremism trans people worldwide are increasingly met with hostility and violence. While not obscuring the differences, better understanding processes of othering and objectification can help shed light and fight the oppression of both groups.

Register by sending an email to  transanimalstudies@gmail.com. 

Symposium Programme

Date: 13 April 2026
Location: University of Amsterdam
BG 2, Room 008
Turfdraagsterpad 15-17, 1012 XT Amsterdam

Zoom link: https://uva-live.zoom.us/j/64431548512

8.30 – 9.00 Registration and Welcome

9.00 – 11.00

Session 1: Animalization, Authoritarianism and the Policing of Life

• Bengisu Koşarhan
  Immunitary Logics of Animalization: Trans Bodies, Nonhuman Life, and Authoritarian Biopolitics
• Elan Abrell
  Beyond Selective Liberation: Trans-Multispecies Solidarity against Fascism
• Hannah Engelmann-Gith
  Defending the Borderlines: Gender and Species in Anti-Queer Ideology
• Melike Gül Mürdük
  Synthetic Alliances: Trans Bodies, Industrial Animals and the Politics of Purity

11.00 – 11.15

Coffee & Tea Break

11.15 – 13.15

Session 2: Materialism, Capitalism and the Reproduction of Bodies

• Andreea Elena Gabara
  From Sexage to Bodily Appropriation: Reframing Colette Guillaumin to Understand Transphobia and Speciesism
• Ishaan Selby
  Reproductive Anxieties, Trans Life, and Animal Capital
• Chiara Stefanoni
  What’s the Matter with Materialism(s)? Revisiting the Anthropocentric Controversy for Trans and Critical Animal Studies
• Chris Lapp
  Transfeminine Ethics of Care in the Capitalocene

13.15 – 14.00

Lunch Break

14.00 – 16.00

Session 3: Trans-Ecological Relations, Care and World-Making

• Ho’esta Mo’e’hahne
  Indigenous Trans* Aesthetics, Care, and Beyond-Human Kinscapes
• Clara Louise Søndergaard
  A Plurality of Eyes: Mosaic Vision as a Trans-Ecological Mode in the Works of Gry Stokkendahl Dalgas
• Jasper J. Verlinden
  “Carried in the Beaks of Birds, Dropped Elsewhere, Far from Our Roots, We Grow”: Human-Animal Relations in Contemporary Trans Poetry
• JD Davids
  Erosion and Erotics: A Trans Critical Animal Studies Comic Book Invites Inquiry

16.00 – 16.15

Coffee & Tea Break

16.15 – 17.45

Session 4: Unruly Desires, Activism and Queer Futurities

• Bianca Nogara Notarianni
  Vectors of Desire: Interspecies Eros and Hierarchy in the Graeco-Roman World
• Eimear Theresa Mc Loughlin
  The Eagle Queers: Unruly Attachments, Nonreproductive Futurity, and Queering Conservation
• Sara Barbo
  In and Against the Present: Compromising and Being Compromised in Animal Advocacy and Trans Rights

17.45 – 18.00
Closing Remarks