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Care, Relationality, and Ethical Learning in Human and Multispecies Contexts

Andrea Breen is an interdisciplinary scholar, writer, and Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph, where she directs the FIDO Research Lab.

Her research examines how learning, care, identity, and ethical responsibility emerge through relationships across family, community, and more-than-human life. Drawing on qualitative, narrative, feminist, critical posthuman, and community-engaged approaches, her work explores multispecies relationships, caregiving, relational learning, and the everyday practices through which human and non-human animals live together.

Breen’s scholarship is informed by extensive practice-based engagement in canine behaviour, welfare, and family support work, as well as earlier professional experience in youth mental health and violence prevention. Across her research, teaching, and creative work, she is interested in how relationships shape ways of knowing, belonging, and becoming.

She is also a writer. Her current book project, Following Olive (working title), represented by CookeMcDermid Literary Management, is a creative nonfiction exploration of human–dog relationships, care, and ethical responsibility.

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