Kieran O’Mahony

Kieran O’Mahony is an interdisciplinary researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Czech Academy of Sciences where he works as a postdoctoral researcher on the BOAR project. As an undergraduate, he studied Sociology in the School of African and Asian Studies at the University of Sussex, before obtaining an MSc in Protected Area and Countryside Management at Birkbeck, University of London. Kieran completed his PhD degree in the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University. 

Broadly speaking, Kieran’s research focuses on human-nonhuman relations, multispecies landscapes, and the ways in which these are (b)ordered and contested. In particular, he is interested in how emergent nonhuman agencies reconfigure material practices, whether everyday forms of cohabitation, scientific knowledge production, or broader strategies of governance. Kieran has variously explored this in relation to conservation in protected areas; rewilding and ecological restoration; biosecurity and wildlife management; and care in systems of animal production.

As part of the BOAR project, Kieran will focus on wild boar in the UK and the ways in which their presence is being shaped by African Swine Fever. This builds on and develops his PhD which broadly explored the complex and controversial material politics surrounding their unofficial, feral rewilding in England. Drawing on literature from animal and cultural geography, STS and anthropology, this ethnographic research utilised a variety methods- observation, camera trapping, tracking, qualitative interviews- to consider how wild boar in the Forest of Dean have transformed various social, political and ecological relationships within a complex, cultural landscape.

Since completing his PhD, Kieran has worked on an EU funded project at Cardiff University focussing on anti-microbial usage, resistance and practices of ‘marginal care’ in UK farming. Previously, he worked on several conservation projects in the UK and mainland Europe, focusing on large mammal and waterbird ecology, and habitat restoration. He also has long-standing research interests in Asia, particularly Japan and Hong Kong.

Education 
2020 | PhD in City and Regional Planning, Cardiff University, UK
2013 | MSc in Environmental Management (Countryside and Protected Area Management), Birkbeck, UK
2003 | BA in Sociology (in African and Asian Studies), University of Sussex, UK 

Selected publications 

• O’Mahony, K. 2020. Blurring boundaries: Feral rewilding, biosecurity and contested wild boar belonging in England. Conservation and Society 18(2), pp. 114-125. (10.4103/cs.cs_19_39)
• Wynne-Jones, S.et al. 2020. Feral political ecologies? The biopolitics, temporalities and spatialities of rewilding. Conservation and Society 18(2), pp. 71-76. (10.4103/cs.cs_20_67)
• O’Mahony, K. 2019. Feral bo(a)rderlands: living with and governing wild boar in the Forest of Dean. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.
• O’Mahony, K., Corradini, A. and Gazzola, A. 2018. Lupine becomings: tracking and assembling Romanian wolves through multi-sensory fieldwork. Society and Animals 26(2), pp. 107-129. (10.1163/15685306-12341501)
• O’Mahony, K. 2017. Wild boar in the Dean: Welcome back?. ECOS: A review of conservation 38(1) (https://www.ecos.org.uk/wild-boar-in-the-dean-welcome-back/)

Affiliations

• Associate Editor- Society and Animals Journal
• Postgraduate Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society/ Institute for British Geographers
• Member of the British Ecological Society