Pre-conference workshop and horse farm tour attended in Lexington, Kentucky (USA)

I arrived in Lexington, Kentucky, late on Sunday August 9th. On Monday (i.e. yesterday) I attended the pre-conference workshop «A “Walkthrough” of Public US Wellbeing Datasets», with instructors Harry Brisson and Robert Moore, both representing the NGO Gross National Happiness USA (GNHUSA), along with about ten others. Today I have attended a Half-Day Thoroughbred Horse Farm Tour in Kentucky, along with about 15 others.

Over the next three days I will be attending the 24th Annual Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS 2026), with the theme «Beyond the Bluegrass: Harnessing Research to Enhance Quality of life». The conference venue is University of Kentucky´s Gatton Student Center, in Lexington, Kentucky.

See also:

ISQOLS 2026 papers scheduled for presentation in Lexington, Kentucky August 13th and 14th

Interviewed live on NRK on the ethics of cloning animals (and humans)

This morning I was interviewed live on Norwegian national TV and radio, in the NRK program Nyhetsmorgen, which is broadcasted on NRK1 (TV) and P1 (radio), in the news feature "Etikk rundt kloning av dyr" (Ethics about cloning of animals). The news feature related to a news story published last weekend about Kristin G. Andresen´s cloning of a horse. Marte Kaasa Arntsen was the program host.

Blurb on horse panel

This is Rhys Evans' blurb on the panel on horses and humans at the Shared worlds workshop arranged in Oslo October 14-15 2011 (see also the program of the workshop).

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Panel on the shared worlds of horses and humans

Humans and horses share a partnership which is unique in many ways. It is a partnership which has a deep historical heritage and new contemporary relevance. Historically, humans and horses have worked together to produce food and other commodities, to produce cities, civilizations, and even empires. Now they work together to produce health and well being, lifestyle balance, appreciation of nature, and self-actualization in an increasingly urbanized world. Where the population of horses suffered a precipitous decline with the advent of mechanized farming and industry, now the number of horses in developed economies is once again growing significantly. Much of this is built around the unique partnership forged between horses and humans. The size, willfulness and behavioral possibilities of horses make them different from other ‘companion animals’ and together the two species build unique worlds out of their different but shared potentials.

Yet much of this world-building has been viewed primarily through an anthropocentric lens. What are these shared worlds which the two create, and how can we know what our horses want, what matters to them, and importantly, how they benefit from the partnership? This Roundtable attempts to address the issue of ways of knowing – what do we know, how can we know, and what can we do with that knowledge in order to make the partnership more equal and more satisfying for both parties?

Poster series for the Shared Worlds seminar

This is the poster series of our upcoming Shared Worlds seminar, to be held in Oslo in mid-October. High resolution posters in PDF and JPEG format (in two versions) are available for download at our event webpage. Feel free to distribute liberally. To register for the event, send an email (including name, nationality, affiliation/position) to shared.worlds.oslo@gmail.com.

Update on the Minding Animals event in Oslo

Plans for the Oslo event in the Utrecht pre-conference lecture series of Minding Animals International is progressing. Today I talked by phone for the first time with Rhys Evans of the Equine Research Network and The Norwegian University College for Agriculture and Rural Development. The two are us are for now the only members of the organizing team. We are currently writing a memo with some initial decision points concerning the one-day event, which will take place Tuesday October 25th 2011 and involve plenary speeches, round table discussions (on human-horse and human-wolf relations) and group work. The overall theme for the event will be "shared worlds".

In the meantime, Minding Animals International has gone public with a list of cities where pre-conference events are being planned or considered.

Minding Animals International is proud to announce that several events are being planned before the next Minding Animals Conference.

Events are at various stages of development, and workshops, lectures, exhibitions or seminars in at least Abu Dhabi, Brisbane, Cape Town, Christchurch, Delhi, London (x2), New York, Oslo, Rennes, San Francisco, Sydney (x2), Wollongong, Uppsala and Utrecht, are now being considered.

The First Pre-conference Event is an expert meeting scheduled for Utrecht on 29 and 30 November, 2010, followed by a Second Event in Sydney on 3 December, 2010, a public lecture by Professor Marc Bekoff.