Episode 253: Animal rights films with Nicolai Skiveren

Today’s guest is Dr Nicolai Skiveren. Nicolai is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of English at Aarhus University in Denmark, where he is working on a project called The Afterlives of Stories: Exploring the Long-term Impact of Environmental Narrative. His research addresses media studies, environmental communication, and audience reception. And that’s exactly what we discuss in the episode; in particular, we explore Nicolai’s recent paper ‘Persuasion or Polarization? Investigating the Reception of Vegan Advocacy Film’, which was published in 2026 in the Oxford University Press ‘Intersections’ volume Environmental Change and Human Experience, edited by Georgina Endfield and Poul Holm.

The people/works that Nicolai mentioned in his answers to the regular questions are:

• ‘Conspiratorial storytelling and environmental crisis’, which Nicolai co-wrote iwth Magnus Andersen and published in the journal Green Letters in 2024. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14688417.2024.241625
• Derek Bousé’s 2000 book Wildlife Film, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt3fhgg4
• Randy Malamud’s 2010 paper ‘Animals on film: The ethics of the human gaze’, in the journal Spring. There is a PDF accessible here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220106002120/https://english.gsu.edu/files/2015/06/Spring.pdf
• Philip Armstrong, from the University of Cantebury in New Zealand https://philiparmstrong.org/

Knowing Animals is proudly sponsored by the Animal Politics book series from Sydney University Press.

Please note that this episode uses a modified version of the poster of Milked for its ‘cover’ because Milked is the subject of Nicolai’s research project; there’s no link between Milked and Knowing Animals.

Knowing Animals is a fortnightly podcast hosted by Dr Josh Milburn who discusses all things related to animals and ethics; animals and the law; animals and politics; and animal advocacy. The show features interviews with Animal Studies scholars and animal advocates.

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