An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Heeral Chhabra (Heritage Postdoctoral Research Fellow, 2026)
Creating Welfare for Animals: Approaches and Attitudes via the OneKind archives
British colonial domination established control and strengthened itself among the colonisers and the colonised through utilisation of many tropes. ‘Animal welfare’ features as one such significant trope which regulated use and abuse of animals, within and outside Britain, by providing a strong ethical and epistemic basis of dominance reinforced through animal-centric charity organisations.
This talk is based on exclusive engagement with one such organisation now known as OneKind. OneKind – a thriving campaign-based Scottish animal charity organisation traces its history to 1911 as the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Vivisection (SSPV) with Netta and Elisabeth Ivory as its founders. Even though this organisation asserted for and catered to the Scottish public, it played significant role in highlighting the colonial-global networks of British empire which ensured unabated abuse of animals for vivisection, medical advancements, and ‘scientific progress’.‘Welfare’ may appear to be an innocent category aimed at betterment of animals but in its manifestation it entailed violence through regulated use of animals.This talk explores the various meaning of welfare which entails freedom from hunger, pain, captivity but also death. It seeks to explore various facets of animal welfare as it developed and gained concrete meanings, procedures, structures and policy frameworks.
Meeting ID: 384 971 962 716 1
Passcode: nV6Rg79e