Donkeys and Me: Feminist Animal Scholar, Dr Martha Geiger

What is human-equine relations?

For me, human-equine studies is interdisciplinary. For some, it’s social science - they’re looking at the social relations between species. For others, it’s more animal science - they’re looking at it from a veterinary or animal welfare perspective. I bring the two together. Social sciences emerged as studying humans. I widen that lens to study both humans and animals, centred together.

I draw on strengths from both disciplines, so that I can bring donkeys’ voices to the forefront of my research. Often in research they are backgrounded and you don’t know what their perspectives and experiences might be of that situation. I’ve been trying, through many years of research, to get as close as possible to their experiences and perspectives. Then I speak with humans. That’s much easier because we speak the same language, but there are a lot of ways to get to donkey’s experiences that don’t rely on language!

How can we ‘hear’ donkeys’ voices?

We live, experience and communicate to the world through our bodies, and that is the same with donkeys. We are learning about their body language, their cues - facial expressions, for example, their ear movements. If we pay close attention, there’s so much that we can learn about them from those embodied experiences and interactions.

Learning how donkeys are interacting with their environment, receiving information, communicating and the changes they go through depending on their experiences and their work is a big part of the research I do.

What can we learn from this ‘listening’?

There are some really lovely relationships where a specific donkey and a specific human have been working together for a long time. It seems seamless, how they interact is like muscle memory.

But there are also times where they’re not communicating or understanding each other. Sometimes that creates tensions and escalations, and trying to understand that from the two perspectives is really important. Humans can put that into words, but I also use visual methods to capture the donkey’s body language such as photographs and video. Then I can communicate what it may look like when a donkey is communicating feelings of fear, pain or something else to those who may not be familiar with donkey body language.

At the same time, I’m doing welfare assessments. I listen to what human coworkers (owners) say about how they care for their donkeys and how their donkeys care for them. I also ask how they value their donkey coworkers and how that care and valuing is reflected in the donkey’s wellbeing. Do they have wounds or sores? Do they have a depressed demeanour, or are they lively and jovial? Does what the human and the donkey say sync? Are they telling the same story?

This feels such an important evolution away from a human-centred society.

I think there’s so much to dismantle about our own thinking; our anthropocentric, epistemological perspectives. We share the world with many different species. And it’s really complex because everything is an interconnected system.

I like to work across disciplines and break down boundaries. To tackle these really difficult, intertwined, almost intractable, issues we need to work together, learn from each other’s perspectives and figure out a common ground. That work needs to happen in a way where colleagues don’t feel alienated or sidelined, and that their perspectives are important. We’re all thinking about how we can come together to focus on not just one singular issue, but several interconnected issues. I think that’s the work of our time.

Tell me about your work on donkeys and feminism.

My supervisor for my masters was a feminist geographer, and I was so inspired by her approach. I read work by other feminist scholars that wasn’t focused on animals, and I thought their concepts were so useful for thinking about the animal ‘other’. All the ways that people and other animals are marginalised, oppressed and exploited - this was a way to look at animals and, in this case, donkeys too. It really synced with my work on exploring donkeys’ positionality in society and their working lives - and also who they work with, the care work that they do, and the social constructions of gender that come into play.

I wrote a paper that was published in December 2023, called Hoof Work - The feminisation of donkeys in central Ethiopia. It uses an intersectional lens, which is predominantly used to study humans in societies. This approach is so valuable for studying how gender, class and different identifiers can affect animals. Through the case study of donkeys, taking an intersectional approach exposed their feminisation and how gender-based violence can extend to animals. Because donkeys are socially constructed as women’s animals, they are similarly marginalised and both women and donkeys experience male violence that has been normalised in society. This feminisation is also reflected in who donkeys work with, where, and how they are understood.

How is your research used?

I don’t do research just for the sake of research. I want it to be out in the world, and be useful and practical.

When I did research in Botswana, I assessed 100 donkeys. I spoke with their human coworkers. A lot of people expressed difficulties in the working relationship and just like you’d tackle any working relationship, I’d ask, ‘How do we get these two coworkers to work better together?’. I saw a lot of welfare issues that I thought could be addressed through education on donkey behaviour.

I collaborated with a local NGO, the Maun Welfare Society, to create a mobile clinic. The equine clinic could address equine-specific health issues, but also deliver educational workshops that donkey owners could attend free of charge. It was a real practical success. And I received an award from the University of Guelph, Canada, for that work.

How do you work with The Donkey Sanctuary?

When I finished my research masters, a professor flagged that there was a job at the University of Bristol funded by The Donkey Sanctuary. The role was leading a project looking at the value of donkeys in central Ethiopia. This was a dream next step. I applied and was successful.

I managed this project out of Bristol’s vet school for two years, which helped me develop the animal welfare science approach further. As part of the project, I conducted fieldwork in Ethiopia. I went there for several very intensive periods of data collection. I ended up with more data than I expected and the project produced a lot of interesting findings. I stayed in touch with The Donkey Sanctuary after that project ended. They’ve been a collaborator in my research for a long time, off the back of that initial project.

How did you get into this work?

My love of equines started when I was three. I went on a pony ride, then I couldn’t stop talking about it. My parents couldn’t get me into anything else. My love of equines has been the North Star in my life. It has guided all my decisions in my career path - that enduring love of a different species, wanting to see the best for them and to contribute to positive improvements in their lives.

As a child, I’d spend time on holiday at a ranch that had donkeys, mules, and horses. At this ranch, I had experiences interacting with mules and donkeys, and learning about them. My understanding was widened in terms of equines being not just horses and how each species differed from one another.

What is the next evolution of your work?

The current paper I’m writing reflects on our approaches to studying animals, in this case donkeys. There hasn’t been enough conversation around how we do fieldwork with animals, how we engage animals in our research, and what the ethical questions are. It also grapples with the difficulties of witnessing human and animal suffering, and how we engage and document that witnessing. Conundrums come up with possible intervening, when you feel like that’s the ethical thing to do but struggle with your position as a researcher.

There’s also another project, which focuses on donkeys as humanitarian workers. They are on the front lines, working to transport food aid and so on, but they’ve just not been visible.