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Chinese Animal Studies Network (CASN)

The Chinese Animal Studies Network aims to unite and connect scholars interested in studying animals across the chronological and geographic breadth of China. Founded in 2024 by Kelsey Granger, Renée Krusche, and Anne Schmiedl after a meeting in Erlangen spent discussing all things animal, CASN aims to encourage scholars to think with, through, and as animals in their research and to introduce Chinese examples into the ongoing animal turn. CASN provides a forum for emerging and established scholars from around the world to contribute to our knowledge of animal histories, interactions, and agencies in a Chinese context.

For more information, please visit our website.

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We look forward to hearing from you!

  • Committee

    Kelsey Granger (Co-Founder) is a sinologist and historian of dynastic China and the wider Silk Roads, specialising in material culture, manuscripts, and animal history. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in 2022 with a thesis focusing on lapdog-keeping among elite women in seventh–tenth century China. She was then a Humboldt Research Fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, where she worked with excavated documents from Xuanquan to access the lives of postal horses on the fringes of China’s Han empire. She is currently a Book Review Editor at the Animal History journal and a Research Fellow at the IHR, London.

    Renée Krusche (Co-Founder) is a Research Fellow and Lecturer (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) in Sinology at Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nürnberg. She studied Chinese Studies alongside English and American Studies at FAU. In 2022 she published her dissertation The Healthy Socialist Life in Maoist China, 1949-1980 with Lexington. Her research interests include the history of science and medicine, gender in Chinese and Asian history, and human-animal relationships. More recently, she has been working on the history of veterinary medicine in imperial and twentieth-century China.

    Anne Schmiedl (Co-Founder) is Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture at the Institute of Sinology and East Asian Studies at the University of Münster. She previously studied Chinese Studies, Japanese Studies, and English Cultural Studies at Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nürnberg, with research stays in Jinan, Taipei, Tokyo, Yamaguchi, and Seoul. Her dissertation was published with Brill as Chinese Character Manipulation in Literature and Divination: The Zichu by Zhou Lianggong (1612-1672). Her research interests include the literature and culture of late imperial China, the history of mantic methods, women in Chinese literature, processes of cultural transfer between China and Japan, as well as animal studies.

  • Activities & Events

    Same and/or Other? Animals in East Asian History
    Workshop, 08 - 10 May 2025
    Website

    For past events, see:
    https://chineseanimalstudiesnetwork.com/past-events/

  • Relevant Links