University of Gothenburg
University of Gothenburg
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Helena Pedersen

Senior Lecturer

Unit for General Didactics and Pedagogic
Work
Telephone
+46 31-786 20 63
Mail
helena.pedersen@gu.se
Visiting address
Läroverksgatan 15
41120 Göteborg
Room number
B4 451b
Postal address
Box 300
40530 Göteborg

About Helena Pedersen

I am affiliated with the research area Education for Sustainable Development at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies. My research field is critical animal studies and critical animal pedagogy: I focus on human-animal relations as an area of critical inquiry in education research. I am interested in how the education system forms its human and nonhuman subjects, and how animals figure in the production, mediation, and dissemination of knowledge more generally. My research also investigates the ways in which education, pedagogy and learning is transformed both in interplay and in conflict with the specific questions evoked by a critical approach to human-animal relations. Through posthumanist theories I explore how the dynamics, affects, materialities and institutions of animal use intra-act in and through the daily activities of the school. I critically analyze power relations between students, teachers, animals, and the education system as such, but also how tensions and instabilities in these power relations may produce effects that work in indeterminate directions.

I am also interested in posthumanist theory and method development in, primarily, the field of education research, working with a repertoire of posthumanist approaches such as zooethnography, feminist materialism, affect theory, and schizoanalysis.

I have published the books Animals in Schools: Processes and Strategies in Human-Animal Education (Purdue University Press, 2010): Animals in Schools: Processes and Strategies in Human-Animal Education | Purdue University Press and Schizoanalysis and Animal Science Education (Bloomsbury, 2019): Schizoanalysis and Animal Science Education: Helena Pedersen: Bloomsbury Academic

I serve on the Editorial Board of the book series Critical Animal Studies (Brill).

With support from GU's internal climate fund and Gustaf Adolf Bratt foundation, I am Co-founder of the cross-disciplinary network GU-CAS: Gothenburg University's Network for Critical Animal Studies in the Anthropocene.

In the podcast "Tending to Talks", I discuss human-animal relations in the academy and beyond with Anna Pietraszczyk:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/40g5TZrAsDyjAgbbAVZ4m6