#  Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard 

 



    ![Two-toned blue graphic background with the name of the seminar in white on top.](/sites/g/files/omnuum8891/files/styles/hwp_5_4__480x385/public/2025-04/Seminar%20STS%20Circle_0.png?itok=lofjKFnq) 

 



 

####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **October 26, 2026** 

 12:15PM - 02:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **CGIS South, S354**  

 [1730 Cambridge Street  
Cambridge, MA 02138  
United States



 ](<https://www.google.com/maps?q=US MA Cambridge 02138 1730 Cambridge Street>) 

A light lunch is provided for those that register by 1:00pm on the Thursday before the event.

 

 

 



 

## Pastoral Warfare: Animals as Weapons of Israel’s Settler Ecologies

### Speaker

- Irus Braverman, SUNY Distinguished Professor and the Teresa Miller Professor of Law, University at Buffalo, SUNY.

### Chair

- Sheila Jasanoff, Faculty Associate. Pforzheimer Professor of Science and Technology Studies; Professor of Environmental Science and Public Policy, Committee on Degrees in Environmental Science and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.

### Contact

**Tenzin Dadak**  
[tdadak@hks.harvard.edu](mailto:henryaustin@hks.harvard.edu)

### Abstract

Across history, nonhuman animals have not only sustained human societies but also advanced projects of conquest and colonization. This study draws on ethnographic and archival methodologies to trace how Israeli settlers deploy sheep as agents of expansion in the occupied West Bank. Developing the concepts ecopastoralism and sheepwashing, I explore how large-scale land appropriation and violence through seemingly benevolent acts of sheep grazing have enabled settlers to simultaneously cast themselves as the just ecological and spiritual stewards of this land. By analyzing sheep (as well as dogs, donkeys, and crocodiles) as instruments of both conquest and care in Palestine-Israel, the study illuminates how nonhuman life and death are evaluated and mobilized within settler colonial regimes of belonging and elimination.

### Bio

Irus Braverman is a SUNY Distinguished Professor and the Teresa Miller Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, where she is also an adjunct professor of geography and a research professor in the Department of Environment and Sustainability. Trained as a prosecutor and an environmental lawyer, her interdisciplinary scholarship examines the intersections of nature, science, and politics, with a focus on environmental and climate justice, settler ecologies, ocean legalities, and the governance of more-than-human life. Braverman has authored and edited thirteen books and published more than one hundred articles and book chapters across law, geography, anthropology, and the environmental humanities. Her recent monograph, Settling Nature: The Conservation Regime in Palestine-Israel (2023), received the Clay Morgan Award for Best Book in Environmental Political Theory from the Western Political Science Association.



 

##  Register for in-person or virtual event 

 



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 See also:- [ 2026–2027 ](/academic-year/2026-2027)
- [ Science, Technology, and Society Seminar: STS Circle at Harvard ](/seminars/science_society/schedule)
 
 

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