Situating Pests: Impacts, Disgust, Expertise and Responsibility (SPIDER)

Despite its significance for public health, its growing economic clout, and the vast scale of the routine animal suffering and death that is integral to its work, the professional pest management (PPM) industry is largely absent from geographical literature. Particularly lacking are analyses that address the lived impacts of domestic infestations for residents, the embodied expertise of professional pest controllers, and methods which allow researchers to explore the lifeworlds of the pests themselves. The PPM industry is also in urgent need of data that can address public misconceptions about pest control and highlight the social and economic significance of the industry's work.

In response, ‘Situating Pests: Impacts, Disgust, Expertise and Responsibility’ (SPIDER) aims to advance ethically grounded and effective responses to pests.
SPIDER's research objectives are:

1. To document the lived experiences of infestation and of working in PPM, including everyday challenges and decision-making practices
2. To develop novel creative methods for representing and understanding pests' geographies of the home
3. To critically evaluate different ways of killing and living with pests as unwanted others

SPIDER is funded by an Economic and Social Research Council New Investigator Grant [grant number ES/Z503563/1], with supplementary fieldwork funding from a Royal Geographical Society Small Research Grant. It has ethical approval from the University of Southampton (ERGO number 99515.A3). The research team includes Principle Investigator Hannah Fair and Research Assistants Miranda Willis and Chloe Crowther.