Dr Jes Hooper
Postdoctoral Research Associate (Anthropocene Encounters)

Profile

Biography

Jes Hooper is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Heritage for Global Challenges Research Center, where she studies the entanglements between humans and more-than-humans in the Anthropocene. Her particular research focus is wildlife trade networks and the interplay between digital and physical spaces in relation to the formation of multispecies communities. Jes applies transdisciplinary methods to bring in the more-than-human perspective. Through her research practice, Jes aims to inspire empathy for lesser known species including those with whom humans have distant connections via global commodification and consumption processes. Jes’ PhD research focussed on species disappearance in the Anthropocene as viewed through the lens of civet species (family Viverridae), small nocturnal carnivores endemic to Asia and Africa. Jes’ research has most heavily focussed on the trade in civets for the production of civet coffee, coffee produced through the civets digestive tract.

Find Jes at the Heritage for Global Challenges Research Centre, room K/207, King’s Manor, or at jes.hooper@york.ac.uk (see also LinkedIn; OrcID).

Career

Jes holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Exeter, and an MSc in Primate Conservation from Oxford Brookes University. Jes is an experienced HE lecturer, with extensive teaching experience in animal welfare and ethics, animal law, animal behaviour and applied conservation. Prior to her academic roles, Jes worked as a Primate Field Assistant in Mexico, and a Primate Zoo Keeper in the UK after completing undergraduate degrees in Animal Science.

Research

Overview

Publications and Projects:

• Hooper, J. (2025) The conservation costs of commercial breeding of civet pets in Indonesia. Discover Animals, 2(1), p.6.
• Producer and narrator for ‘Civet Coffee: From Rare to Reckless’ (winner of two film festival awards and available on YouTube).
• Hooper, J. & Kline, C. (2024) Emerging voices for animals in tourism. CABI.
• Hooper, J. (2023) Thinking with civets: the role of zoos in the decolonisation of animal tourism. Animals, 13(11), p.1739.
• Hooper, J. (2022) Contamination: the case of civets, companionship, COVID, and SARS. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 25(2), pp.167-179.
• Hooper, J., Linna, M., Kassinen, S. and Salvage, J. (2022) Technologies, bodies and faecal matters: Embodied empathy with coffee producing civets. Transpositiones, 1(2), pp.73-94.
• Hooper, J. (2022) Cat-poo-chino and captive wildlife: tourist perceptions of Balinese kopi luwak agrotourism. Society & Animals, 32(3), pp.229-249.

Projects

Distant Nature Encounters:
Civet trade is socially constructed, organised and facilitated in online, digital spaces. Rising accessibility of smartphones and internet connectivity present a “contact zone” between species, cultures, places, lived realities and emerging possibilities.Through the commodification of civets, we can see how seemingly disparate populations and categories are deeply interconnected through product demand and economically driven extraction processes with far reaching multispecies impacts. This project seeks to engage audiences to think critically about the multispecies linkages inherent to global commodity chains and personal and societal consumptive behaviours. In doing so, this project asks: If we can unravel the ways that consumers, industry leaders and policymakers connect with species whom they may be unaware even existed, can we ignite a curiosity towards a world where more positive multispecies futures are made possible?

Civet Society: Disappearance Amidst Global Connection:

Book- forthcoming with Sydney University Press.

Lively Transitions: Vietnamese civet farming:
Throughout Asia, civets are increasingly captured, transported, and housed in commercial facilities for the production of civet coffee, luxury meat, and medicinal products. In Vietnam, civet farming is rapidly growing in popularity as traditional crop, poultry and pig farming is becoming more costly and labour intensive than farming wild species. Widely promoted as a poverty reduction and conservation strategy to rural communities in Vietnam, civet farming is nonetheless an unsustainable farming alternative and lack of biosecurity presents increasing biohazards for workers, local communities, and ecosystems. Broadly, the project will explore the relationships held between trappers, farmers, restaurant owners, consumers, and the civets that are commercially traded and consumed. It will include the social, cultural and economic significance of civet products and their far-reaching consequences for ecosystem and multispecies health, and environmental justice. Primarily, this project asks: What are the indigenous perspectives of farming transitions and agricultural heritage in Vietnam.

Research group(s)

Heritage for Global Challenges Research Centre

Grants

• 2023 The Mohamed Bin Zayed Conservation Fund, $2,935
• 2022 The Kone Foundation, €96,390
• 2022 The John Lewis Foundation, £25,000

Collaborators

Meri Linna & Saija Kassinen (art duo ‘Harrie Liveart’)

The Civet Project Foundation

External activities

Memberships

Member of the IUCN SSC Small Carnivore Specialist Group 

Convenor of the IUCN SSC Small Carnivore Specialist Group’s Civet Working Group

Member of the Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA)

Editorial duties

Journal of Small Carnivore Conservation (Guest Editor for 2026 Special Issue “Viverridae”)

Invited talks and conferences

• Hooper, J. (2025) ‘Distant Nature Encounters’. CPD Consultancy for Population Matters, London.
  
• Hooper, J. (2025) ‘Human-civet relations and the rising issue of civet coffee for human, animal and environmental health’. Guest Seminar, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford.
• Nelson, V., Loveridge, A., Hooper, J. and Burt, A. (2025) ‘Marine species on the move workshop’. Socio-Oceanography Conference. National Oceanography Centre, Southampton.
• Hooper, J. (2024) Civet Coffee: From Rare the Reckless’. Guest Seminar, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan.
• Hooper, J., Linna, M., Kassinen, S. and Salvage, J. (2024) Embodied perspectives: becoming-with coffee producing civets. Exploring Human-Animal & Multispecies Relations in the Anthropocene. University of Brighton, Brighton.
• Hooper, J. (2023) Civet survival stories from inside a captive breeding program, Multispecies Conference. Würzburg, Germany.

Media coverage

Hooper, J. (2025) One of the world’s most endangered civets is threatened by the world’s most expensive coffee. The Revelator. https://therevelator.org/save-this-species-owstons-civet/

Fair, J. (2025) The true cost of luxury coffee. BBC Wildlife Magazine. Spring Issue.

Andrea S. (2024) Five popular souvenirs you should never bring home. The Washington Post.

Dina, M. (2023) $1,500 for ‘naturally refined coffees- this is what it really means’. The National Geographic.

Performances

Narrator for ‘Civet Coffee: From Rare to Reckless’ documentary short

Business engagement

CEO and founder of The Civet Project Foundation