Dr. Heeral Chhabra, a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the History department was recently featured on an award-winning podcast called ‘The Animal Turn’ where she discussed her research at UoL.
Heeral is currently working on a Wellcome funded project on street dogs in India with the ROH Indies project (Remaking One Health: Decolonial Approaches to Street Dogs and Rabies Prevention in India). Heeral was awarded her PhD from the University of Delhi (2022) for her thesis Animal ‘Welfare’, State Regulations and Questions of Cruelty c.1890-1940s which sought to understand animal-human relationships in colonial India through the prism of law.
A transcribed soundbite of the interview
“The idea of health, species, these cannot be seen in isolation. The health of one, is intrinsically linked to the health of the other. And I think one disease in this sense is Rabies, which is really there in India, it’s still there, I mean as a child growing up, I’ve seen dogs die of Rabies. So, it’s very much a reality, but how do you tackle this reality? And once you think of that I think you need to take into account all the stakeholders which are there in the system. If you’re looking at dogs and other animals, it’s important to also account for their health, because they’re also victims of the disease. They’re not the perpetrators, they’re not the ones responsible for spreading it, they’re also the ones on the receiving end of the disease. So, once you change your lens to that perspective, I think it’s important because everything is interlinked. But to see those interlinkages, and to see that you need to- so elimination is not a solution when it comes to health concerns…”
Keep up to date
@heeralchhabra.bsky.social
@theanimalturn.bsky.social
Listen in full
- Animal Turn website: https://www.theanimalturnpodcast.com/s7-multispecies-health/s7e7
- Buzzsprout: https://theanimalturn.buzzsprout.com/1246910/episodes/16406656-s7e7-urban-health-histories-with-heeral-chhabra
- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/50yvz4vcvRoTozige3JDjO?si=YyCFLdDUTAumgxSJeh86eA
On the iROAR network (where you can listen to many podcasts pertaining to animals): https://iroarpod.com/iroar-member/the-animal-turn/