During this Lunch Seminar, Annabelle Dufourcq will present her ERC proposal  “Animal Subjects: Phenomenology and Animal Sciences”. Abstract: The main objective of this project is to foster the systematic recognition of animal subjectivity by enabling a methodical cross-fertilizing dialogue between phenomenology and animal sciences, thus making a vital contribution to the understanding and the furtherance of human-animal intersubjectivity. The intuition that animals are not simply objects is widely shared in society and science. However, to approach animals as subjects meets with a serious obstacle in natural sciences, which require the methodic objectivation of animals. Phenomenology, on the other hand, proposes a scientific approach to embodied subjectivity and human-animal intersubjectivity via a first- and second-person perspective, but still has to overcome its original anthropocentrism and clarify its relations to a naturalist approach to animals. This project challenges two correlated common assumptions: that phenomenology is not scientific and animal sciences are incompatible with first- and second-person perspectives. The concept of animal subjects provides an eminently suitable angle of approach by emphasizing the tension between animals as that which is being studied and animals as singular individuals relating to their world through their own perspective and agency. The project studies and builds further on significant but sparse bridges that have been thrown between phenomenology and animal sciences from both sides of the gap. It implements an unprecedented three-pronged method combining (i) the mapping out of the current situation, existing concepts, methods, obstacles and needs, (ii) hermeneutic interviews with animal scientists and (iii) the development of a conceptual and methodical toolbox enabling fruitful cooperation between phenomenology and animal sciences. This project will remedy the lack of systematic framework for a structured and well-considered strategy of cooperation between these animal sciences and phenomenology, thus making a groundbreaking contribution to both.