The last episode of Season 4 is a review of the season “Animals and Waste.” Herre de Bondt, Rebecca Shen, and Claudia Hirtenfelder touch on some of the common themes to emerge in the season. These include how animals are valued as well as the mobility and accumulation of waste.
Recorded: 14 August 2024.
Herre de Bondt has done research on rats in Amsterdam, crows in Tokyo, and gulls in The Hague. His work has now brought him to London where his PhD project is concerned with urban bird feeding practices. From hanging up fatballs for chirpy robins to tossing seed to flocks of ‘flying rats’, Herre is determined to investigate the inherently multispecies practice of bird feeding. He is particularly interested in the ways non-human animals inform and shape the contemporary city in collaboration with – and in defiance of – humans. You can connect with Herre via Twitter (@HerreBondt).
Rebecca Shen is a landscape designer and researcher as well as an Assistant Content Producer and Designer at The Animal Turn. Rebecca is inspired by design as pursuits of worldmaking, especially to advance interspecies justice and collectivity during times of challenge. She graduated with a Master in Landscape Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design in 2023, where she completed her design thesis, Sanctuary State: California’s Cowscape in Transition, which envisions the transformation of an 800-acre industrial “cattle” feedlot into a cow sanctuary, a site for interspecies confrontation, healing, and codesigning. Through her design work, Rebecca explores human-animal relationships in the built environment, ecological restoration, and regenerative food systems. You can find out more about Rebecca on her website or connect with her via email at beccshen@gmail.com.
Credits:
- Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer and host
- Herre de Bondt, co-host and co-editor
