Dawn’s subject is animal husbandry and she is interested in ways of depicting human – animal connections creatively. It could be argued that people who work daily with animals are more engaged with nature than our intellectual discourse normally expresses and are in a position to help to write husbandry as both an art and a science. Therefore, Dawn’s project involves collaboration with farmers, scientists and other workers who have contemporary experience of animal husbandry.

In orthodox science, the researcher is aiming towards an objective, mechanical knowledge and the subsequent presentation of results tends to assume this detached perspective. Dawn’s research fits into a broader question of how to realise a ‘science of qualities’, which can include human experience, feelings, intuition, imagination and participation as rigorous aspects of the process. Such a science would also be an art. She is looking, in particular, at the way in which poetry can foster connections and allow a more holistic perspective in the writing – it can express the patterns and the complexities of life as it is lived. Poetry can also help in exploring the idea of an organism as an integrated entity, with a life and nature of its own. In this sense, poetry is like a place of husbandry, where one organism may encounter another.

Dawn Wood currently lectures in the Contemporary Science Department of the University of Abertay, Dundee.