AAG 2027 CFP for Animal Geographies Paper Session
More information on the 2027 American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting in NYC HERE
If you are new to AAG and decide to register, please consider becoming a member of the Animal Geographies Specialty Group (AnGSG)
Nuisance Nonsense and Conservation Cowboys: A critical interrogation of conservation logics in concrete ecosystems and urban space.
With apologies for cross-posting from the Animal Geography Communities page, and warm wishes to all members past, present, and future.
2027 AAG Annual Meeting - New York City, NY
February 8-12, 2027
CFP – Early Paper Ideas Welcome! - Virtual and In-Person participants are welcome
Organizer: Jacquelyn Johnston, Florida International University, jajohnst@fiu.edu
In urban environments, encounters between animals and humans are frequently governed by conservation policy or narratives that render the species killable in the urban context, not necessarily because of ecological necessity, but through strategic, anthropocentric classification systems that prioritize human convenience and control. Viral individual animal stories sometimes expose a broader, largely unquestioned system in which even native species—such as raccoons, opossums, foxes, and coyotes—are routinely designated as “nuisance” and subject to lethal management when they appear in urban spaces (Johnston, 2026). This disjuncture reveals a critical inconsistency: the same species valued in conservation frameworks elsewhere are, in cities, stripped of protection through overlapping and often incoherent policies that, in practice, manufacture killability despite ambiguous or contradictory classifications.
Proposals are invited that examine how multispecies negotiations contribute to broader debates on nonhuman liminality in urban spaces (Johnston, 2024). Of particular interest are analyses that consider how policy founded on ideas of conservation ecology itself produces liminality that extends across populations and species, shaping the lives of both human and nonhuman actors. Nonhuman thriving in cities is all too often reduced to "nuisance" policies, with little attention given to the extraordinary social and cultural adaptations of these urban animal communities (Barrett et al., 2019).
Of special interest is identifying researchers from different global cities working on the same species in contexts of opposing classifications in the native/nonnative binary. For example, my work this year will focus on the Green Iguana in South Florida, so I am particularly interested in finding a collaborator who can share their research and iguana stories from an urban context where the species is classified as “native.”
This session builds on our opening discussion at AAG 2026, and aims to bring together myriad examples of different types of animals thriving in contested urban spaces. For example, Egyptian geese negotiate spaces of inclusion and exclusion in Frankfurt, Germany (Kornherr, 2025), and urban pigs caught in the middle of sociocultural, religious, and nationalist debates must navigate their position within the intersection of political economy and ecology in Chennai city, India (Narayanan, 2023). Feral cats have been reclassified as community cats, but they remain suspended in a state of liminality along with their caretakers in South Florida (Johnston, 2024). An entire special issue in Political Geography explores the abjectification of species in many types of spaces commonly conceived of as made-for-humans (Fleischmann, 2023; Fleischmann & Everts, 2024). Several researchers have dedicated pages to the charismatic albeit often hated pigeon (Jerolmack, 2008; Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2011; Nagy & Johnson, 2013; Hubbard & Brooks, 2021; Shcheglovitova, & Pitas, 2022; Pitas, 2022; Palmer, 2024).
While the theory of exclusion has been explored in many works, including those mentioned above, there remains a significant need to explore the mechanics and practice of exclusion these populations of urban species face as part of urban living, even more critically, thriving (Johnston, 2021; Franks et al., 2020; Sebo et al., 2024).
This session seeks to push the boundaries of multispecies ethnography, animal geography, political ecology, wildlife welfare, conservation, and urban planning. Priority is given to interdisciplinary approaches to unpacking the practice of lethal urban policies. Proposals might address similar cases in other urban contexts, draw on cross-city comparisons, or critically assess the political, ecological, and ethical stakes of how urban biodiversity is defined and managed, or address any of the following questions:
What does it mean to belong in urban spaces? Who, or what infrastructural, policy, or practices shape what it means to belong as an urban nonhuman resident?
Explorations of how interdisciplinary backgrounds and professional orientations shape the ways this question is answered, where perspectives overlap, and where points of tension emerge.
Opportunities for understanding and reimagining more than human life in urban contexts.
Research that explores the way "native" species are actively excluded from urban spaces as opportunities through which to explore how the logics of conservation biology break down in urban or anthropocentric spaces.
Research that problematizes the logics of "conservation" in built/concrete urban spaces, particularly where certain species are vilified for their impact not on an "ecosystem" but rather their impact on urban infrastructure.
Actively engages with policy rooted in conservation ideologies, but is applied to concrete or man-made spaces
If you are interested in furthering these discussions and sharing your research, please send abstracts of up to 250 words to Jacquelyn Johnston (jajohnst@fiu.edu). Please be sure to include a possible title, author(s) name, contact information, and plans to attend the Annual Meeting either in person or virtually. The modality (in-person or hybrid) will depend on participant availability, with priority given to content over attendance type.
Sessions will be either in-person or hybrid, depending on interest. Informal idea pitches and conversations in advance are welcome!
Early Interest is ongoing, please reach out with ideas and questions!
Projected Deadline for this CFP: October 1, 2026
Projected Notifications sent by: November 1, 2026
References
Barrett, L. P., Stanton, L. A., & Benson-Amram, S. (2019). The cognition of 'nuisance' species. Animal Behaviour, 147, 167-177.
Donaldson, S., & Kymlicka, W. (2011). Zoopolis: A political theory of animal rights. Oxford University Press, USA.
Fleischmann, L. (2023). More-than-human political geographies: Abjection and sovereign power. Political Geography, 107, 102949.
Fleischmann, L., & Everts, J. (2024). Abject lives: An introduction. Political Geography, 111, 103102.
Franks, B., Webb, C., Gagliano, M., & Smuts, B. (2020). Conventional science will not do justice to nonhuman interests: A fresh approach is required. Animal Sentience, 4(27).
Hubbard, P., & Brooks, A. (2021). Animals and urban gentrification: Displacement and injustice in the trans-species city. Progress in Human Geography, 45(6), 1490-1511.
Jerolmack, C. (2008). How pigeons became rats: The cultural-spatial logic of problem animals. Social problems, 55(1), 72-94.
Johnston, J. (2021). Incongruous killing: Cats, nonhuman resistance, and precarious life beyond biopolitical techniques of making-live. Contemporary Social Science, 16(1), 71-83.
Johnston, J. (2024). Transspecies liminality: unpacking the politics and patchy legitimization of urban human-cat relations. Social & Cultural Geography, 25(6), 928-946.
Johnston, J. J. (2026). Insignificant otherness: Manufacturing killability of native animals living in Florida's urban spaces. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 25148486261437568.
Kornherr, E. (2025). Caring with abject urban animals: Tensions between exclusion and inclusion of Egyptian geese in the city. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 8(2), 536-556.
Nagy, K., & Johnson II, P. D. (Eds.). (2013). Trash animals: How we live with nature's filthy, feral, invasive, and unwanted species. U of Minnesota Press.
Narayanan, Y. (2023). Animating caste: visceral geographies of pigs, caste, and violent nationalisms in Chennai city. Urban geography, 44(10), 2185-2205.
Palmer, A. (2024). Digital animal deathscapes: The online circulation of animals killed for conservation. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, e12733.
Pitas, J. H. (2022). Deathly storytelling in the ecological city: How pigeons became falcon food in Baltimore, Maryland. Social & cultural geography, 23(1), 29-46.
Sebo, J., White, A., & Sims, T. (2024). One Health and Multispecies Urban Infrastructure. One Health in the Law (Jane Kotzmann & Katie Woolaston eds., 2025).
Shcheglovitova, M., & Pitas, J. H. (2022). Deadly intersections: Living and dying with non-humans in everyday life. Social & Cultural Geography, 23(1), 1-9.
--
Get involved with the Animal Geography Specialty Group!
Join the AAG Knowledge Community http://community.aag.org/home
Visit our website www.animalgeography.org