Michelle Szydlowski
Michelle Szydlowski received a grant for “The Complex Lives of Cultural Icons: A Captive Elephant Biography Project,” which attempts to identify the ways in which Nepalese working elephants are defined and discussed. Biographical writing can demonstrate individual animal agency and make animals’ roles more visible in society. Likewise, biographies are a novel way to allow more-than-human animals to co-produce their identity, allowing readers to better assess individuals’ physical and psychological needs. Biographical writing encourages concern for animal lives and acknowledges their intrinsic rights. For more on the project, visit International Elephants.
The CAF grant enabled Michelle to travel to Nepal in January 2025 to complete the research of elephants involved in tourism. She was also able to record the biography of one elephant who had recently died due to neglect. That narrative takes the form of a mixed biography/journal article, which explores how “embodied empathy” can be a tool to further interspecies understanding. She has submitted the article to Society & Animals. A further benefit of the CAF grant, has been that Michelle has been given additional funding to study cats and dogs in Nepal.
Michelle Szydlowski is Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University, where she holds a Ph.D. in Anthrozoology. Michelle’s current research focuses on captive elephants in Nepal, their health and welfare, and the health and welfare of the members of marginalized communities who care for them. Her research includes an examination of governmental, NGO, and INGO programs that purport to help captive elephants and how their interactions impact both population-level health and individual elephant lives.
Michelle’s exploration of the biography genre is shared with Radhika Subramaniam, an advisory board member and 2018 grantee, who wrote The Elephant’s I, an experimental work examining the story of the historic elephant Abu’l Abbas.