Awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, the grant is set to fund a doctoral training programme intended to investigate the relationship between humans and animals. 

 

The programme, which launches in October 2027, has been named Knowing Animals: The Leverhulme Doctoral Programme on Interdisciplinary Pathways to Multispecies Understanding. It will support up to 24 PhD students and six Masters plus PhD studentships for those from underrepresented backgrounds.

 

The RVC-UoE partnership intends to unite academics in animal welfare science, animal behaviour, ecology, humanities and more.

 

It is hoped that this collaboration will support researchers to understand and represent animal perspectives, as well as deploying holistic knowledge to navigate the field. RVC says this is central to global challenges including antimicrobial resistance, animal breeding and biodiversity loss.

 

The programme will be led by Dr Siobhan Abeyesinghe, associate professor in animal behaviour and welfare science and head of animal welfare science and ethics at the RVC. They will work alongside Joah Madden, associate professor in the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter.

 

Dr Abeyesinghe said: “Science is increasingly providing nuanced representations of animals’ lived experiences, demonstrating how little we yet know about their evolved wisdom - the majority of global knowledge. What animals know, and how they know, can contribute important information about the world to decisions that benefit all organisms and our shared environments. Yet it remains an untapped resource because research is currently fragmented across disciplines and animal sectors and remains decoupled from governance, ethics and justice.

 

Joah Madden added: “Our individual and societal attitudes and actions towards domestic, captive and wild animals are fundamental in addressing pressing questions including food system sustainability, biodiversity loss and new disease emergence. Understanding the causes and consequences of these attitudes demands a symbiosis between the humanities and social and biological sciences.

 

“This award creates a unique research collaboration, melding the extensive, world-renowned expertise in these diverse fields at Exeter and the Royal Veterinary College."