Philosophy in the Wild

Midgley’s mixed moral community is a framework that springboards from human-animal relations as always-already integral to our relationship with others. The fact that non-human life listens is a crucial part of Midgley’s approach to shift from what divides us from animals and the natural world, to what we share. Listening is a key tenet of our similarities with other animals and part of how we order and shape our lives. Non-human life listens, in terms of detection, coordination and collective thriving. Midgley stressed an emotional porousness of the human species barrier and she knew that our relationships with animals cultivate our capacity for extended sympathy, playful inquiry and curiosity, and dynamic potential for cross-species entanglements.

Our workshops designed for young people explore various ways of listening to a wide range of species that call Pembrokeshire their home and love it - just as we do.

Dr Elizabeth Mackintosh (Beth) is joined by a team of women who are best described as forces of nature! We are all united by our love of wild places and wild things and Mary Midgley. 

Beth is a Philosopher and a Visiting Research Fellow and Lecturer at the University of Winchester. Her research focus is in moral philosophy, medical ethics and animal and environmental ethics and, of course, the work and legacy of Mary Midgley.

Nicola Davies is an award winning author and writer of more than 50 books for children: fiction, non-fiction and poetry. She is also a zoologist, field biologist, researcher and then BBC presenter.

Hanan Issa is a Welsh-Iraqi poet, film-maker, scriptwriter and artist, and she is the current National Poet of Wales.

Sheridan Angharad James is the Canon Pastor at St David’s Cathedral and a writer who has written recently for The Journal of Christian Social Ethics on simpler, humbler bolder ways of being in Christian community.

Eloise Williams is a beloved Welsh author, a Valleys girl, and the was the Children’s Laureate for Wales between 2019-2021.

Gill Lewis is a critically acclaimed Children’s writer, vet and environmentalist who was worked everywhere from Africa to the Arctic but now resides in North Pembrokeshire. All her stories are about the natural world and our human animal relationship with it.

Tuesday, 8th April 2025, 2-4 pm

Workshop: Lost Listening

Birds, Butterflies & Bugs at Eco Dewi, St David’s.
Philosophy and crafts – Listening legacy scrolls.

With Reverend Sherdian Angharad James 

Species map: birds, bugs and butterflies

A free event, but register here.

Saturday, 12th April 2025, 10.30 am - 12 pm

Workshop: Listening as Casting

Listening, and to being listened to has often been for the domain of the few. Proud working-class author, teacher and drama facilitator Eloise Williams helps us to listen to the voices of the past, to inform the present, in this interactive art and drama workship at the HaverHub in Haverfordwest.
Philosophy, drama and art workshop.

With Eloise Williams

Species map: puffins, dogs and human-animals.

A free event, but register here.

Saturday, 26th July 2025, 10.30 am - 12 pm

Workshop hub 3: Listening as Doing

Listening for Action and Change at the HaverHub, Haverfordwest.
Philosophy and poetry workshop.

With Hanan Issa

Species map: human animals

Booking form will go live in May!

Saturday, 9th August 2025, time tbc

Workshop: Listening as Repair

‘Seals and Stepping Back’ at the Llangwm Literary Festival.
Philosophy, role-play and crafts.

With Gill Lewis

Species map: seals and manx shearwaters

For this, you’ll need to book with Llangwm Literary Festival nearer the time.

Wednesday, 27th August 2025,  11 am - 2 pm

Workshop : Expansive listening

Stories of non-human sounds and conversations. Zoologist, writer and poet Nicola Davies will help us to understand the sounds of the coast and the sea and how technology and ancient wisdom is transforming our understanding.
Workshop at Oriel y Parc, St David’s.
Philosophy, zoology and zig-zag art books.

With Nicola Davies

Species map: whales, turtles and more!

For this event, you can follow and book through Oriel y Parc.

Activities here explore a Natura 2000 site, initiated and lead by Katell Lorre: la Petite Ferme d'Emeraud. An agri-cultural farm project aimed at self-sufficiency while practicing agro-ecology, working "in respect of life and the galette!".

Katell is in charge of managing a plot of land on the Armorican coastline which, thanks to her efforts, has been able to maintain the Natura 2000 label in accordance with the restoration of the biodiversity achieved. The Natura 2000 label had been granted some time ago as part of a project, titled 'Pastures' and launched by one of her collaborators.

The restoration approach is particularly worthy of interest and admiration: it is with the non-human animals living on this land that Katell has been able to achieve the ecological restoration of the land’s ecosystem and biodiversity The relationship with the non-human animals is not based on exploitation nor coercion: the farm is a multi-species community where the role of the animals is simply to inhabit the land according to their natural needs and habits (grazing).

Samia Mahé

Samia Mahé is an ethics lecturer in a Master's program in design. As a project facilitator, her role also involves contributing to the organization of events and the development of beneficial connections. 

Drawing from philosophical approaches to the naturalism of the mind and value theories, Samia is particularly interested in the role of reasons and feelings within a naturalistic approach to ethics, especially within a neo-Aristotelian framework. This is why the work of Mary Midgley is of particular interest to her research. Indeed, Mary Midgley’s philosophy emphasizes the fundamental nature of relationships in the origins of ethics, within a naturalistic ontology. Furthermore, Midgley stresses the natural and rational obligations humans have toward non-human animals and other humans, based on a non-intellectualist view of the capacities of the mind and body. 

Samia places particular importance on harmonious relationships, with applied or foundational approaches in other philosophical fields: biomimicry, corporate ethics, and also cognitive and naturalistic theories of values. In psychology, Samia has specifically studied evaluative theories of emotions. Continuing her research, she became interested in psychological explanations for restorative experiences, especially Nature experiences. 

This allows her to question the value and specific function of interspecies relational experiences. With this workshop, the goal is to specifically explore the ontology of these non-verbal experiences, as they are part of authentic relationships with non-exploited animals, forming a community of life. 

Virginie Blanville

Virginie Blanville is the Educational Manager of the Master’s program in Design and Living Worlds at the Higher Design Institute of Saint-Malo (France).

Virginie is trained and works as a designer. She then independently trained in transition design and various approaches to social and environmental issues applied to design, in order to have a more responsible practice, and primarily one that is essentially more aligned with life and living beings.  

With this knowledge and expertise, she is in charge of the programming and pedagogical coherence of the Master’s program in Design and Living Worlds at the Institut D., which is a unique place for training, innovation, and collaboration. 

Virginie is particularly interested in spatial design and experience design. She has notably led several exhibitions delivered to the community to make visible ecological processes that are not directly observable.  

Currently, in her research work, she is exploring the transformative power of life and nature. She is also reflecting on language, particularly on how to express the agency of non-human animals within language. 

lehubdudesign.com/designers/eirl-virginie-blanville/profil
insitut.design/

Katell Lorre

Katell Lorre is a farmer of an agri-cultural and ecological farm and a writer. Regarding the immersive workshop, she is the guarantor of the respect for life of non-human animals in practice, as she possesses specific knowledge of non-human animals, the Landes flora, and the coastal environment of Armorica due to her professional activities. 

Katell has accumulated ethological knowledge and skills, which enables her to ensure epistemic mediation during the workshop between human participants and non-human animals, to guarantee favorable conditions for the formation of relationships. 

This event is not open to the general public but for master’s students of a Design Institute and integrated into their education (Virginie Blainville being the Master's Program Director). The master’s degree focuses on how to place life and living things at the centre of design projects (paying particular attention to environmental and social transition issues and knowledge we learn from nature).  

The immersive workshop will be connected to the ethics course, which will dedicate a significant portion to discussing the natural foundations of ethics, particularly through neo-Aristotelian approaches and contemporary theories of values, while also integrating innovative approaches in the field of environmental ethics (biomimetics) and research in psychology on the human-nature relationship (psychological underpinnings of the experience of nature). 

The workshop will be conducted by Katell Lorre, who succeeded and succeeds in restoring the plot’s biodiversity through the ecological and ethical efforts she has undertaken as the "human of her farm" enabling the forming of a multispecies community.  Having gained particular skills and knowledge relevant to the human-animal-relations, she will be in charge of the epistemic mediation between animals and the visitors.  

The workshop will be multi-phased and progressive. The aim is that each participant will experience how it feels to enter a multispecies living community and go through socio-affective and cognitive events engaging with non-human animals from different species. Based on previous prototypical experiments and theoretical works, main outcomes expected are that the experience of entering into a natural and multispecies community and to progressively engage in relationships with non-human animals (seeking mutual understanding, display empathy, setting boundaries …) – counting on some epistemic guidance to reduce possible avoidant attitudes related to fear and unpredictability – will essentially contribute to increasingly appropriate relationship-building with oneself on the one hand, and within the new comers and the non-human animal community, on the other.  

From that experience, participants usually spontaneously question why a non-human relational context had the power to enable that kind of restorative experience: the experience of sharing something of peculiar importance for themselves (as it might be, sharing of evaluative attitudes), and of the forming of reciprocal interactions between humans and non-humans (recognition of a specific need and acting in response). These constitutive of relationships, seem to have something essentially supportive, unpredictable, and restorative. That is why, we suggest to explore further the hypothesis that the experience of entering into this multispecies living community could be regenerative in kind, in so far as, at least, it supports the embodied awareness of genuine and naturally appropriate affective dispositions.   

Human-wolf relations are anything but straightforward as sources of hope for mixed communities. Few species have been subject to wilder human projections than wolves. They have been vilified, cast as the ultimate beast and the mythical opposite of humans, something quite aptly described by Midgley in her “The Concept of Beastliness”-paper (1973). At the same time, wolves have been romanticized, idealized as symbols of a pristine nature better off without humans. Wolves have been hunted to extinction, only to be reintroduced as champions of rewilding. Now, as the pendulum swings once more, they face renewed threats of expulsion from the mixed communities.

The National Wolf Conversation describes itself as an “unprecedented effort to convene people across the nation to engage around the longstanding conflict about wolves in the lower 48. Spanning three years, the conversation aims to give voice to all perspectives, build understanding, and determine a shared path forward.” It is an interesting application of peacemaking practices developed in the human context to human-animal-relations. This time, wolves are neither just “problems” nor “protégés”, but agents in their own right, entitled to be represented as stakeholders. For this team, the goal is to exchange general expertise and specific experiences with this experiment, fostering dialogue not just among themselves but also with students and the wider community.

Prof. Dr. Greg McElwain

I am Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at The College of Idaho, USA. I first interacted with Mary Midgley while in grad school in 2005 and later visited and interviewed her for my dissertation on the mixed community in 2011. This was the first of our yearly visits/interviews in Newcastle from 2011-18, which provided valuable background for my book Mary Midgley: An Introduction (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). My research has focused on the intersection of animal and environmental ethics, where Midgley and the mixed community feature prominently. I have fond memories of visiting with her in Newcastle and am truly grateful for our collaboration during the final years of her life.

I am currently working on a second book titled Mary Midgley on What Matters: Conversations on Science, Ethics, and Nature (London: Bloomsbury Academic, Forthcoming), which is a thematically-curated collection of my philosophical conversations/interviews with Midgley from 2011-18. I enjoyed participating in the first biscuit tin journey, and I try to keep up with the relevant Midgley happenings on Bluesky and X.

Dr. Francisco Santiago-Ávila

Fran researches and practices the application of nature ethics to our mixed-community of people, animals and nature, with a focus on the promotion of worldviews rooted in non-anthropocentrism, an ethic of care, and justice.

His quantitative research has focused on the evaluation of the impact of policies and interventions to both conserve and prevent conflicts with large carnivores, specifically with endangered wolves in the US (gray, Mexican, red). His qualitative research interest and advocacy work focus on the promotion of ethical deliberation to equitably consider animal claims within the policy process, and the exploration of worldviews that promote the flourishing of our entire community of life.

Fran is a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico – Río Piedras (BA, Political Science and Economics), Duke University (MA, Public Policy and MS, Environmental Management) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (PhD, Environment & Resources). A founding board member of PAN Works, he is also the Director of Advocacy at Washington Wildlife First. Before that he was the Science and Ethics Manager for Project Coyote, and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Carnivore Coexistence Lab, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Programme details coming soon!

CHECKPOINT ZOO documents a daring rescue led by a heroic team of zookeepers and volunteers who risked their lives to save thousands of animals trapped in a zoo behind enemy lines in the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. 

Five weeks after the Invasion first began, the Zoo’s founder, Oleksandr Feldman, posted a desperate plea to social media – the relentless shelling had left thousands of animals trapped in their cages with little food and food water, and only a few zookeepers left to care for them. 

Miraculously, the post went viral as zoos from across Ukraine and Europe were suddenly calling with offers to house the remaining animals. More so, within 24 hours, a group of volunteers had appeared on Feldman’s doorstop offering to help any way they could. 

A deeply moving documentary that raises complicated questions about human-animal-relations, not least in the face of deteriorating relations between humans. For “Philosophy in the Wild” Barbara and Josh are planning to meet for a discussion after a screening in Virginia (date tbd). 

Joshua Zeman 

Joshua Zeman is the director and executive producer of Checkpoint Zoo and one of the leading voices in documentary storytelling. His critically-acclaimed film Cropsey is considered one of the top true crime documentaries of all time. In 2017, Zeman directed The Killing Season, which was also executive produced by Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney. Zeman also directed Murder Mountain, a docu-series for Netflix that’s been called “a must-watch”. In 2020, Zeman executive produced and directed The Sons of Sam, which was the #1 watched show on Netflix around the world during the week it was released.  

Most recently, Zeman directed The Loneliest Whale, a cinematic quest to find the 52Hz Whale, whom scientists believe has spent its entire life in solitude. The film, which was executive produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, has been called “a modern-day Moby Dick" and was nominated for three Critics Choice Awards. 

Barbara J. King

Barbara J. King is emerita professor of anthropology at William & Mary and a freelance science writer and public speaker. The author of seven books, including most recently Animals’ Best Friends: Putting Compassion to Work for Animals in Captivity and in the Wild, Barbara focuses on animal emotion and cognition, the ethics of our relationships with animals, and the evolutionary history of language, culture, and religion. Her book How Animals Grieve has been translated into 7 languages and her TED talk on animal love and grief has now received over 3 million views. 

Barbara is honored to be a new Research Fellow at PAN Works, a center for ethics and policy dedicated to the wellbeing of animals. 

Barbara is a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient whose work has appeared in Scientific American, NPR, Aeon, and Undark, and she regularly reviews books for NPR, the Washington Post, and the TLS. Barbara enjoys science outreach at events like the World Science Festival and the National Academy of Sciences’ Science & Entertainment Exchange “science speed dating” night, and through online discussions with groups interested in topics ranging from compassion for animals to ecological grief. In Virginia, she lives with her husband and rescued cats. She tweets about animals, science, and books @bjkingape. 

Details coming soon

 instagram.com/philosophyinthewildgarden/ 

Michela Dianetti

Michela Dianetti is a lecturer in Philosophy and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Galway. Her PhD research developed a literary ethics of attention grounded in the philosophies of Simone Weil and Iris Murdoch, applying them to the literary work of Elsa Morante. She facilitates philosophical inquiries for children in Galway primary schools, as well as for young adults and older persons.

insight-centre.org/our-team/michela-dianetti/

Lucy Elvis

Lucy Elvis is a lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Galway, a founder of Curo Thinking for Communities a not-for-profit that focuses on empowering groups to think philosophically together in non-formal educational contexts from music festivals to art galleries and libraries and an art writer. Her research and teaching focuses on the power of art and of philosophical thinking to enrich human life.

universityofgalway.ie/our-research/people/history-and-philosophy/lucyelvis/

Chiara Li Mandri

Chiara Li Mandri is a PhD candidate at the University of Palermo, Italy. Her current research draws on Giacomo Leopardi to develop an innovative educational method to raise awareness of contemporary climate and ecological disruptions, emphasising the role of poetry and art as essential educational tools.

Nora Ward

Nora Ward is a lecturer in the philosophy department at the University of Galway. She received her BA and MA from the University of Galway and her Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. Her research focus is on environmental ethics and philosophy, with a particular interest in ecological attention, rewilding, and ecofeminism.

universityofgalway.ie/colleges-and-schools/arts-social-sciences-and-celtic-studies/history-philosophy/disciplines-centres/philosophy/people/noraward/

Programme details coming soon