Equine Cultures are in Transition

Early June 2025 Friederike and I packed our bags to travel to Manchester for the 2025 edition of Equine Cultures in Transition Conference.

This biennial conference is dedicated to the study of equines and human-equine relations from a social sciences and humanities outlook. Speakers at the conference understand equines to be sensitive creatures with social agency, who influence their environment and are capable of building and maintaining interspecies relations. Those who meet for this event are also accutely aware that our ways of life with horses could greatly improve and that horses and other equines still generally live today under human dominion. It is to take an informed, constructive and critical outlook on equine cultures that we meet. But this academic event is also one of a kind because of the ways in which it succeeds in weaving together an international community of engaged equine scholars for almost a decade now. As many have said at the conference: this community of researchers is an immense support for all its members, especially because human-equine studies remains a very niche, sometimes marginalized, area of research that asks researchers to do quite a bit or trail-blazing.

This year's theme was decent work, decent leisure, decent lives. It was hosted by the Manchester Metropolitan University from June 3rd to 5th 2025. With over 65 speakers, from 12 different countries, these topics were discussed through a great variety of lenses. Moreover, the organizing committee made it an important aspect to bring in the discourse of practitioners and advocates so that real-life practices can enrich research and vice versa.

So are equine cultures transitioning toward decent work, decent leisure and decent lives for horses and other equines?

Prof. Susanna Hedenborg opened day 2 with a keynote on equine welfare management. She took an historical perspective on equine welfare, reminding us that a certain version of this discourse was already alive in many european countries in the 19th century. An increase public concern against equine cruelty matched the increased advocacy for women's and children's rights. Unsurprisingly, however, the development of equine rights was stifled; especially because so many horses were used for labor and sport performance. The development of a discourse on equine rights was perhaps also stifled by the fact that horses and other equines didn't have a voice in the way that women and children were able to have their voices -- even if at great costs -- be heard. And this last aspect might mark a point of transition in equine cultures today. While the equine welfare discourse of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century centered on preventing animal cruetly, today's discourse defends a form of positive welfare concerned with understanding equine needs and give them legitimately, a voice.

There might have been progress achieved, at least in our conceptions of equine welfare, in the past decades, but as Jo Hockenhull and Tamzin Furtado have emphasized, we must remain aware of the risks of welfare washing. Sharing their hands-on experience in equine welfare implementation, we were given to understand that gaining the right knowledge about what equines need is not sufficient to bring about lasting changes. Especially, it was my understanding, when trying to tackle the issue one private owner or trainer at a time. How can one implement positive equine welfare with structual and political changes such that individuals alone don't bear the burden?

Embedding equestrianism in a yet different contemporary challenge, Prof. Inga Wolframm organized an afternoon workshop to discuss powerful tools for everyday equestrians to promote interspecies sustainability. This thought provoquing workshop shows a very adequate transition of equine cultures to meet the challenges of its time: individual equine care is no longer sufficient, equine spaces matter. In this fluctuating period of ecological transition the equine sector can make itself the guardian of the land : the guardian of a land that should be biologically diverse and on which multiple species should be able to share a home. I left this workshop with rich new ideas for the ways the land horses are kept on could be reorganized: away from sleek and uniformed fenced paddocks towards diversified terrain features, abundant numbers of trees, bushes and plants all around, and a strong sense of sharing this land with other creatures including birds, insects and small mammals.

These are just a few strong impressions I'm taking away for those rich three days.

Moreover, this edition of Equine Cultures in Transition held a wonderful surprise for Friederike and I, as we were awarded The Karen Dalke Early Career Prize for Excellence in Equine Research.

This prize is awarded by the scientific committee of the Equine Cultures in Transition Conference. The prize is in loving memory of Dr. Karen Dalke, who dedicated her life and career to improving the lives of horses. She was an active member of the equine social science community and an engaged supporter of the Equine Cultures in Transition Conference. This award has been created in her memory to bolster the careers of junior scholars and early career researchers specialising in equine-human ethics and wellbeing.

The award recognises top quality scholarly work that represents solidarity with equines, as well as active academic community participation. The award recognises the importance of supporting emerging scholars, emphasising the importance of developing future generations of equine researchers. In 2025 Friederike and I were awarded the prize for our collaborative work on equine ethics and education. The prize was also awarded to Dr. Emily Haddy for her research on the promotion of equid welfare, especially promoting the welfare of donkeys. The prize was presented by Prof. Lynda Birke and Dr. Nora Schuurman.

As you know, Friederike and I collaborate to bolster philosophical research in equine studies and equine social science. We organised the international conference Discussing Equine Ethics: Taking Stock from Theory and Practice at the University of Fribourg in September 2022, we are currently in the process of writing a book titled Equine Ethics: a Philosophical Introduction and we presented the paper “Emancipatory Education for a Shared Equine-Human Community” at Equine Cultures in Transition 2025. Moreover, my paper “What are good multispecies relations?” published in Feminist Animal Studies (Routledge, 2023) provides a feminist ethics of care analysis of four kinds of equine–human relations: asymmetrical relations, relations of utility, work relations, and friendship. 

We are deeply touched and delighted to have received this award. We take it to renew our motivation to keep doing this work with passion. We are very much looking forward to Equine Cultures in Transition 2027!

Maude