Lauren E. Van Patter

Lauren Van Patter is a PhD Candidate in Geography at Queen's University where she is working with Dr. Alice Hovorka and The Lives of Animals Research Group (https://www.queensu.ca/livesofanimals/home). She completed her MA in Geography at the University of Guelph under the supervision of Dr. Hovorka and Dr. Karen Houle. Her thesis explored human-feral cat relations in southern Ontario, exploring both the ‘beastly places’ of feral colonies and the discursive production of nature/culture and domestic/wild transgressions which shape understandings of belonging. She has also studied domestic dog welfare and management in rural Botswana, and is a collaborator on the Guelph Cat Population Taskforce. Her current SSHRC funded research explores conflict and coexistence with urban wildlife using a case study of coyotes in southern Ontario, pairing ethnographic and ecological data to ‘story and map the more-than-human city’. Lauren is also interested in multispecies research methods and ethics, and is a Fellow with Dr. Will Kymlicka and Sue Donaldson's Animals in Philosophy, Politics, Law, and Ethics (APPLE) research cluster at Queen's.