Agathe Lemaitre

Agathe Lemaitre holds a PhD in Anthropology from the College of Indigenous Studies, Department of Ethnic Relations and Cultures at National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan, where she graduated in July 2023. Her doctoral research explored the relationships between the Austronesian Paiwan people and two animal species: the locally extinct clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa) and the endangered mountain hawk-eagle (Nisaetus nipalensis). Through social, political, and environmental perspectives, her work examines human–animal relationships in contexts of conservation and extinction.

Her research interests focus on multispecies relations, particularly in situations of ecological disruption, conservation, and species disappearance. Drawing on concepts such as haunting, disappearance, and survivance, she investigates forms of resilience and continuity in times of environmental and social change.

From July 2024 to June 2026, she held a two-year postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange (Taiwan). Affiliated with the LISE research laboratory (CNAM–CNRS, Paris), her project was entitled: "From Conservation to Survivance: Itineraries of a Liminal Disappearance in Paiwan Relationships with Wildlife".

The project

Title: Inhabiting Extinction: Scientific Classifications, Survivance, and Pluriverses of Disappearance around the Clouded Leopard