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As the teaching season comes to a close we start to get into conference season for the Animal Behaviour & Welfare Research Group, which is always a super exciting time of year!  

After the excitement of late March where we hosted an Animal Welfare Research Network Workshop on participatory engagement - there’s a blog post on that coming soon -  we have also had some excellent representation at other conferences.  

Kat Hart was an invited speaker at the BSAVA Congress and Expo in Manchester for two different case-based workshops – advanced medical nursing and advanced diagnostic imaging. 

As a Senior Lecturer in Veterinary Sciences, it is really great for Kat to have the opportunity to share her expertise with other veterinary professionals at the UK’s largest veterinary event, in addition to networking and sharing information on Harper’s postgraduate veterinary nursing courses.  

Kat was also supporting a veterinary nursing dissertation student at the same event, Emma Burns, who had taken a poster on the Impact of Nutritional Calculations in Hospitalised Canine and Feline patients.  

This was a great opportunity for Emma to share her research with the wider veterinary community as nutrition during hospitalisation is such an important factor for the recovery of patients. Emma’s research identified that calculating in-patient nutritional requirements reduced the risk of detrimental weight loss during the hospitalisation period, in contrast to those who did not have their nutritional requirements calculated.  

Emma with her poster at BSAVA Congress and Expo (Photo credit: Kat Hart) 

Following on from Kat the rest of the conferences and guest speaker opportunities in April were over the water, in Ireland.  

Dr Ellen Williams was one of the organisers of the International Society for Applied Ethology (ISAE) UK & Ireland Regional Conference, along with her Irish counterpart, Keelin O’Driscoll. 

This year the ISAE UK & Ireland Regional Conference was in Teagasc, Cork. It was the 10-year anniversary of the meeting being held in Ireland and so it felt like it was high time to return. 

Keelin and Ellen always try to couple this conference with other things so that delegates can get the most out of their travel and increase opportunities for networking and project development. 

In 2023 we held it at ÎÞÂ붯»­ and coupled it with an Animal Welfare Research Network workshop on human-animal and machine-animal interactions. An overview of the output from that workshop is available here.  

Anyway, back to present day – the ISAE UK & Ireland Regional Conference was held in conjunction with the All Irish Welfare Forum, which meant we were lucky enough to attend the All Irish Welfare Forum after the ISAE regional conference. The ISAE regional conference was a huge success. We were delighted to be joined by Dr Simone Ciuti from University College Dublin and Professor Bob Elwood from Queens University, Belfast. Dr Ciuti talked to us about his work with the deer at Phoenix Park in Dublin, including human-wildlife interactions and the implications for that on animals. Professor Elwood launched the afternoon session with his work on pain in crustaceans.  

Dr Holly Vickery and Ellen were both representing the Animal Behaviour and Welfare Research Group here.  

Holly was discussing some very preliminary findings on wearable technology in goats. Using technology to help us understand more about animal behaviour is a really important area of study at the moment with multiple benefits and so it is great to see this being expanded out into wider species! 

Dr Holly Vickery presenting her work at the International Society of Applied Ethology UK & Ireland Regional Conference at Teagasc, Cork (Photo credit: Ellen Williams) 

Ellen was then presenting work on the importance of catering for individuality in animal management, using elephants as a case study species.  Recognising that animals have individual needs and that it impacts on how they experience their managed environments is paramount for positive animal welfare. Ellen did this as a joint presentation with her colleague Lucy Rutherford, from Dublin Zoo.   

Dr Ellen Williams and Lucy Rutherford present their research on elephant personality (Photo credit: Lucy Rutherford)  

Ellen returned to Dublin Zoo a few days later to give a talk with Lucy as part of the Dublin Zoo conservation lecture series the following week.  

It was great to be able to share this research with such a wide audience and having really diverse conversations about how we can use this kind of information - with colleagues with whom we had both worked with as part of data collection, alongside researchers at the ISAE regional conference and also zoo visitors and volunteers! 

The poster advertising the talk on elephant personality that Ellen Williams and Lucy Rutherford delivered at Dublin Zoo (Photo credit: Lucy Rutherford)   

Dr Holly Vickery also continued her run in Ireland by heading on to Galway for the British Society of Animal Science (BSAS) annual research conference. 

This year on the day before the main conference an Early Careers Symposium was held, Holly was an invited speaker as a double act with sociologist Dr Mark Garavan to discuss resilience in early career. 

Having completed her PhD during the pandemic, whilst holding down a part time lecturing job, Holly felt well placed to discuss overcoming challenges! One of the key takeaways from this session was discussing different strategies to manage work-life balance - including deleting the work email app from your phone before a holiday, and physically blocking out time in your diary to take a walk or catch up socially with colleagues. 

Later that day she also discussed her journey from PhD to lecturer in the careers workshop.  

Dr Holly Vickery (seventh from the left) at the BSAS Early Careers Symposium (Photo credit: Martina Regan) 

Conferences are such excellent networking opportunities and we are all really delighted to have had the opportunities to meet colleagues that we have and start to develop some really exciting collaborations. The rise in online opportunities has been great to support participation in events but being in person is really important for developing those personal connections. There are a few more events in the calendar so look out for blog posts on those – and come and say ‘Hi!’ if you see us at any conferences!