Austin (he/they) is a Ph.D. student in sociocultural anthropology. His work focuses on human-animal and human-canid relations, and how racial and colonial logics are articulated through them. His dissertation examines the political ecology between humans, the state, wolves and wolfdog crosses or “hybrids” in the contexts of the exotic pet trade, animal sanctuaries, and wildlife management agencies. Austin is interested in how these sites incorporate canids and other nonhumans into settler-colonial biopolitical projects, and how these formations naturalize racial and anthropocentric violence. Their project is also deeply concerned with modes of interspecies care, identity construction, and embodied communication.

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