Description
How do we come to know another species? What helps us understand animals—not just in terms of biology and behaviour, but in ways that are emotional, imaginative, cultural, and deeply human?While the Sciences offer invaluable insights into equine physiology, cognition, and welfare, this event asks a different question: what can the Arts and Humanities teach us about horses? How have literature, poetry, storytelling, visual art, and embodied experience shaped our relationships with these powerful, sensitive, and intelligent animals?
In this special two-hour gathering, researchers from across Ulster University will present a series of creative and scholarly explorations of the horse—not as specimen, but as companion, character, co-worker, and kin.
Dr Kevin De Ornellas will deliver a short lecture on representations of horses in Western literature. He will argue that writers treat fictional horses in the same way that society as a whole treats material horses: in literature, as in life, there is a sentimentality about some individual, anthropomorphised horses but widespread denial about humanity's exploitation of horses en masse and of non-human animals in general.
Dr. Frank Ferguson will present poetry readings that capture the lived and imagined experience of horses in the world—offering language that evokes empathy, presence, and emotional resonance. His work encourages us to listen, feel, and reflect on what it means to be in the company of these creatures.
Dr. Alan Hook will share his practice-based research on interspecies kinship, presenting work that asks: how do humans and horses come to understand one another across species lines? What role do emotion, posture, presence, and mutual attention play in how we relate?
Participants will also have the opportunity to engage with Equine Eyes—an immersive experience designed to simulate how a horse sees and senses the world. This interactive piece invites audiences to step into a horse’s embodied experience; challenging our assumptions about how other animals experience reality.
Together, these contributions create a space for public audiences to encounter the horse not only as an animal, but as an idea, a collaborator, and a creature with whom we share histories, landscapes, and emotions.
This event will appeal to anyone who lives or works with horses, as well as those interested in animal studies, literature, creative arts, and alternative ways of knowing. It offers a space to reflect on the many ways we imagine, care for, and learn from other species—and why the Arts and Humanities are vital to that conversation.
| Period | 4 Jun 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event type | Conference |