extinction studies

Extinction Studies: Stories of Time, Death and Generations

We have now finalised our new edited collection: Extinction Studies: Stories of Time, Death and Generations, to be published by Columbia University Press in May 2017. The collection includes seven chapters by members of our group, along with an introduction by the editors and a...

Encountering Crows: Living with wildlife in a changing world

Thom van Dooren: I am currently beginning work on a new 3-4 year research project focused on crows around the world. Below are a few excerpts from a recent grant application, stitched together to give a sense of my larger project and research questions. This research is funded...

Wildlife, Climate Change and Mass Death

Deborah Rose: January 2014 – Australia has just come through its hottest year on record, and the new year is bringing ever more record breaking heat. ‘Weather on steroids’ is how the Australian Conservation Foundation puts it. Those who experience the heat most...

Keeping Faith with Death: Mourning and De-extinction

This post was written by Thom van Dooren and Deborah Rose. It is the text of a short presentation delivered at “Dangerous Ideas in Zoology,” the 2013 forum of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales. ___ For roughly the past five years, our combined research...

Zombie Politics and the Lives of Animals

Deborah Rose: Virtues are easily lost, the cynics tell us, but vices linger remorselessly. Indeed, vice-like habits can take on a life of their own and play significant social roles. Recent events have turned my thoughts toward habits of hatred, fear-mongering and persecution...

We are a group of humanities scholars dedicated to the future of life in this time of extinctions. Our historical moment is one of unprecedented loss of planetary forms of life. Our research and writing is situated in a lively practice that emerges from our entanglement in these processes of loss.

People

We are a group of humanities scholars based in Australia, Europe and North America. You can read more about our individual research and writing here.

Publications

The members of the Extinction Studies Working Group actively publish academic books and articles in a range of disciplinary areas. All of this work is aimed at furthering discussions about the meaning and significance of extinction in complex multispecies communities.