UFAW Hume Animal Welfare Research Fellowship

Initiated in 2001, the Hume Animal Welfare Research Fellowship scheme promotes high quality science with the aim of substantial advances to animal welfare. The award, offering up to a maximum of £120,000 over three years, is made on an occasional basis to support post-doctoral research.

UFAW would like particularly to encourage applications in the following fields:

  • development of methodologies aimed at elucidation of the neurological basis of sentience in animals
  • developments in approaches to alleviating welfare problems in farmed, companion and/or laboratory animals through breeding
  • developments in detection and alleviation of pain
  • developments of methods of welfare assessment

UFAW does not wish to exclude potentially valuable projects in other aspects of animal welfare science and applications for work in other areas will also be considered.

The Fellowship which will cover salary and research costs up to a maximum in the region of £120,000 over the three-year duration of the project. Applicants must be postdoctoral scientists, or expect to have gained their doctorate prior to taking up the Fellowship. Funding for the second and third years' work will depend upon evidence of satisfactory progress during the preceding year. Both the quality and the value for money of the proposed work will be considered when judging the applications.

The second UFAW Hume Research Fellowship was awarded in 2005 to Dr. Johanneke van der Harst, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Utrecht University who will study "Anticipatory behaviour as a multi-functional tool for the field of animal welfare research".

With the widespread acceptance that animals' subjective emotions and feelings are crucial factors affecting their well-being and welfare, addressing the difficulty of assessing and measuring those states as determinants of a welfare assessment, has become increasingly important. Dr. van der Harst's work is aimed at enabling further development of a new and practical field technique that can be used to assess animals at the farm or group level, rather than in a research environment, and which can be shown to reflect their internal mental state.

Based on the observation that animals display anticipatory behaviours when aware of impending reward, the study will investigate these behaviours and their relationship to environmental conditions as reliable and practical indicators of positive or negative mental states and their intensity.

Click here for further information about the UFAW Hume Animal Welfare Research Fellowship and how to apply.

See the UFAW 2004-2005 Annual Report here for an update on the first Hume Animal Welfare Research Fellowship