It is our great pleasure to welcome you all to the upcoming Posthumanities Hub and The Eco- and Bioart Lab Seminar/Webinar with Prof. Thom van Dooren (University of Sydney/University of Oslo) on “The craft of poisoning: learning not to eat cane toads“

The seminar/webinar will have a hybrid format.

When: 30th May, 13:15 – 15:00 CEST

Where: Room FAROS, Tema building, Linköping University (Campus Valla) & on Zoom. For the registration link, see below.

The craft of poisoning: learning not to eat cane toads

Abstract:

Since their introduction in 1935, cane toads have been making their way across the top half of the Australian continent. As they’ve moved, they have left a wave of death in their wake, animals poisoned by the unfamiliar toxins that toad’s carry. All efforts to eradicate toads, or even slow their advance, have failed. In recent years, however, a new set of approaches to coexistence with cane toads have begun to emerge. These approaches centre on large scale efforts to teach native species not to eat toads through a ‘conditioned taste aversion’ that is produced with the use of nauseating toxins. This paper explores the history and ethics of these multispecies pedagogical experiments. It asks how the various toxic substances that are deployed by both toads and by scientists open up new possibilities for learning, for becoming differently together, for reshaping ecosystems and shared lives, while also carrying with them significant, and often mortal, dangers.

Bio:

Thom van Dooren is Deputy Director at the Sydney Environment Institute and an Associate Professor in the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney, and a Professor II in the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities at the University of Oslo. His research and writing focus on some of the many philosophical, ethical, cultural, and political issues that arise in the context of species extinctions and human entanglements with threatened species and places. He is the author of Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction (Columbia UP 2014), The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds (Columbia UP 2019), and A World in a Shell: Snail Stories for a Time of Extinctions (MIT 2022). www.thomvandooren.org

REGISTER HERE:  https://liu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5csd-6rrDoqHteMOaRhfLomKPCSZuh01xBa