Seminars with external speakers will be once or twice a month. On other weeks, seminars are held by the internal AMGC researchers, students, and guests.
For more information or to propose speakers, please contact Axel Cerón González, Charlotte Van Riet, Oriana Chiappa, Vendula Smolikova or Maxwell Thiemens who are in charge of the seminar organisation.
PROGRAM 2025-2026
THURSDAY 13 November 2025
Dr. Jonathan Goldenberg
Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo
SHARKSense: Reading the ocean through the colors of sharks
Pollution is one of the most pervasive threats to biodiversity, yet assessing its ecological impact remains costly and complex. In the SHARKSense project, we explore an unconventional but promising bioindicator: skin darkness. Sharks, as meso-apex predators, accumulate heavy metals from both their environment and the food chain. Intriguingly, melanin - a pigment responsible for dark coloration - can bind and sequester these toxic compounds. Could pollution be driving the evolution of darker-skinned individuals?
SHARKSense investigates this question by integrating computer vision, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, and fieldwork to uncover correlations between melanin deposition, skin darkness, and pollution. By spanning taxa, geography, and time, we aim to determine whether integument color can serve as a reliable, non-invasive proxy for ecosystem health, beginning with a foundational framework that links pigmentation patterns to environmental stressors. This talk will introduce SHARKSense, present early findings, and discuss how pigmentation might offer a scalable tool for ecological monitoring, bridging molecular mechanisms with conservation strategy.
PREVIOUS SEMINARS
THURSDAY 9 October 2025, 4 PM CET, Room 10G
Dr. Katharina Ameli
Lecturer at the Institue for Sociology and coordinator at the Interdisciplinary Center for Animal Welfare Research at Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen
Multispecies ethnography in animal-assisted services
Following professor Tim Ingold’s thought-provoking seminar in March, our research group continues the conversation on more-than-human approaches with a focus on multispecies ethnography. Dr. Katharina Ameli will share with us insights from her work on animal-assisted services, inviting us to consider how non-human beings actively shape social worlds.
Multispecies ethnography offers an innovative methodological framework for researching animal-assisted services by understanding human-animal interactions not only as functional relationships, but as reciprocal, socially and materially embedded practices. Instead of viewing animals as objects of human care, this approach places their agency, perceptual worlds, and individual contributions at the center of analysis. The talk will address the inclusion of animals within multispecies ethnography in animal-assisted services.