Maura Beste

Maura Beste is a second year Ph.D. student in Gender and Women’s Studies with a minor in Animal and Comparative Biomedical Sciences. They are a 2022-2023 University Fellow working at the intersections of Human-Animal Interaction, feminist science, and animal studies. 

Combining their training in animal behavior, veterinary medicine, and critical cultural theory, Maura’s work focuses on the translation of canine science to lived human-dog experiences. Untangling a variety of narratives surrounding our canine partners, such as domestication narratives, training and behavioral practices, and how scientific epistemologies come to inform how we relate across species, Maura is an interdisciplinary scholar learning from dogs, humans, and everything in between through feminist qualitative methodologies and critical science studies frameworks.

Outside of their dissertation work, Maura is a member of the Environmental Humanities Research Initiative. They will be presenting their work at the International Society for Social Studies of Science conference in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and will have forthcoming work in the journals Configurations and Humanimalia. Maura has been awarded the LGBTQ Institute Research Grant and the Women’s Plaza of Honor fellowship, and has worked as a teaching assistant for undergraduate courses in Animal Science and Gender and Women’s Studies.