ABOUT AWRN
What we do and why we do it
Animal welfare is an area of societal concern which can generate polarised views. Systematic and scientific animal welfare research is needed so that decisions by government and other stakeholders can be based on information that is as objective and unbiased as possible. UK animal welfare research is amongst the best in the world, but is a relatively new and small discipline.
The AWRN was set up and initially funded by the UK Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) to bring together the UK animal welfare research community, researchers in related disciplines, and stakeholders with a professional interest in animal welfare issues, in order to enhance communication and collaboration, and promote high quality fundamental and applied animal welfare research and its implementation. The Animal Welfare Research Network is now funded by a grant from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and some of the funds for this are being provided by the Animal Welfare R&D budget held jointly across Defra, Scottish Government and Welsh Government.
We work to achieve the Network aims in a number of ways:
- annual meetings
- themed workshops organised by network members
- members-only resources including research skills and current projects
- encouraging cross-institute mentoring and joint supervision of early career researchers
- providing online up-to-date information and findings from UK animal welfare research in newsletters and on the website
