Tolerating Urban Animals. Techno-moral perspectives on killing and caring for other species
Name of applicant
Mikkel Bille
Title
Professor
Institution
University of Copenhagen
Amount
DKK 12,671,764
Year
2025
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accomplish
What?
Cities are filled with animals: Some cherished, some heavily regulated, and some just tolerated. Hedgehog houses offer shelter, traps kill rats, and deterrence spikes for pigeons are everywhere. Yet proximity to undomesticated and feral animals also leads to conflicts over which animals, in what numbers, should be where, and what the appropriate technologies to attract or kill them are.
Why?
Ideas about how to live with urban animals are changing across Europe. Growing concerns for animal welfare and biodiversity are challenging use of technologies like traps, poison, and fences. How and why are moral and technological shifts in relation to urban animals occurring? The project aims to rethink how moral values and technologies shape everyday life and politics of human-animal relations.
How?
Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival studies in three Nordic countries, we explore technologies and techniques for managing urban animals. We follow the technological development and legislation on animal rights in EU since the 1970s, and explore contemporary technologies and everyday practices of deterring, killing, or caring for animals.