Welcome! (Draft version July 2025)

The FEWD team plans for the end of the University of Vienna Easter break 2026, in April from Thursday, the 9th till Saturday, the 11th, the first European multi- and interdisciplinary animal advocacy / law workshop with geographical focus on SEE / CEE.

The FEWD already organizes since 2001 the Vienna Animal Advocacy Lectures at the University of Vienna, - https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/vaal/  / https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/vaal/history/

At the forthcoming workshop there will be a specialized spotlight on Poland, which is definitely in CEE the leading animal law / advocacy research nation, - https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/country/poland/bibliography/

And additionally in Warsaw at the SPWS you find the pioneering course “Prawa zwierząt, interdyscyplinarne studia podyplomowe” - https://fewd.univie.ac.at/swps/

The FEWD organizes this European workshop in cooperation with colleagues from different nations and different academic fields. Besides the humanities, especially the social sciences, Slavic studies and law are involved. And certainly there will be cooperation with relevant people from the civil society movement, - https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/bibliography/social-movement/

One of the more general humanistic aspects of this workshop is to support civil society through academic research. So for example, there will be reflection of the pioneering article Challenging Civil Society Elites in Poland: The Dynamics and Strategies of Civil Society Actors by E. Korolczuk. Published 2022 in East European Politics and Societies.  And further important is her 2017 edited book Civil Society Revisited: Lessons from Poland, -  https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/country/poland/sociology/

But the basic inspiration for this multidisciplinary workshop on the topic of animal advocacy comes also from different international, originally mainly Anglo-American sources.  There, already in the 1970s developed this modern, originally mainly secular western social movement, than also analyzed in academia, - https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/bibliography/basics/  

Systematic international academic reflection on this topic exists definitely since 1993 with the founding of the journal Society and Animals. This  led 2015 additionally to the more specialized journal Politics and Animals. Also 2015 started in Poland with Zoophilologica the first Human – Animals Studies journal in CEE, - https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/journals/

Poland is also the initial geographical point in this FEWD workshop. For the reason that the first social science publications about the animal advocacy / rights movement in a CEE country are dealing with Poland. Written are these intellectually fascinating articles / book chapters by Prof. Kerstin Jacobsson, one of the leading Scandinavian sociologists.

We recommend starting with the very interesting abstracts / introductions of:
 Jacobsson, K. 2012. Fragmentation of the collective action space: The animal rights movement in Poland. East European Politics 28 (4): 353-370.

Jacobsson, K. 2013. Channeling and enrollment: The institutional shaping of animal rights activism in Poland. In: Jacobsson, K. / Saxonberg, S. (ed.) Beyond NGO-ization? The development of social movements in Central and Eastern Europe. Farnham, Ashgate: 1-35

Fröhlich, C., & Jacobsson, K. (2017). States Shaping Civic Activism: Comparing Animal Rights Activism in Poland and Russia. The Sociological Quarterly, 58(2), 182–201.

See more at https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/country/poland/bibliography/jacobsson/

Additionally, this workshop is motivated by articles like:

Aavik, Kadri 2018 The animal advocacy movement in the Baltic states: links to other social justice issues and possibilities for intersectional activism. Journal of Baltic Studies, 49:4, 509-527.

Munro, Lyle 2012. The Animal Rights Movement in Theory and Practice: A Review of the Sociological Literature. Sociology Compass 6(2): 166-181.

Traini, Christophe 2016. The Animal Rights Struggle: An Essay in Historical Sociology (Protest and Social Movements). Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press. Open Access at http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/31889

And many other relevant sources at

 https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/bibliography/basics/  and  https://fewd.univie.ac.at/aa/bibliography/social-movement/