The central focus of my research is human-nonhuman animal relations. As a sociologist I look at power relations and the ways nonhuman animals are represented and treated differently depending on whether they are categorised as pets, pests, meat, wild, or other. If we want to understand some of the challenges nonhuman animals face, we really need to understand the roots of these problems — which we can trace back to enduring norms and patterns over time.
A lot of this work has been exploring pet keeping and power relations, spanning multiple projects and resulting in my book Critical Pet Studies: Reimagining relationship and resistance with animal companions among other outputs.
I am very interested in the role of imagination in shaping our relations with other animals, and have multiple collaborations that span across sociology, environmental science and creative writing to unpack how we imagine animals now and what it might look like to change this to create vastly different multispecies futures. This work has a range of applications, from urban design to environmental policy to disaster resilience. If we want to create a resilient and ethical multispecies world we first need to reimagine what that world looks like.
I also research dual vulnerabilities in human and nonhuman animals — looking at how experiences of social problems (housing insecurity, domestic violence, natural disasters) are more complex when they involve multispecies relationships.
Key works
Sutton (2026) Critical Pet Studies: Choreographing human-companion animal relations, Palgrave Macmillan.
Browne, J. & Sutton, Z. (Eds.) (2024) Human-animal relationships in times of pandemic and climate crises: Multispecies sociology for the new normal’, Routledge.
Sutton, Z. & Hall, K., (2026) “Feral Catastrophe”: Analyzing the Narrative Construction of Australian Cats, in Annie Potts (ed.), Animals, in Georgina Endfield and Poul Holm (eds), Oxford Intersections: Environmental Change and Human Experience.
Sutton, Z. (2026) “If I don’t like the cats then they have to go”: Navigating pet unfriendly rental accommodation in South Australia, Housing Studies.
Oliver, C. & Sutton, Z. (2025) Do species meet? Antagonising interspecies relationality through textual encounters, Society & Animals.
Mackenzie, J. & Sutton, Z. (2025) Ambivalence and Veganism: Rethinking sentiment in moral choices, in Ambivalent Activism, Bristol University Press.
Sutton, Z. (2024) Fairweather friends? Rethinking multispecies companionship in the new normal, in Browne, J. & Sutton, Z. (Eds.) Human-animal relationships in times of pandemic and climate crises: Multispecies sociology for the new normal’, Routledge.
Sutton, Z. & Browne, J. (2024) Introducing multispecies sociology for the ‘new normal’, in Browne, J. & Sutton, Z. (Eds.) Human-animal relationships in times of pandemic and climate crises: Multispecies sociology for the new normal’, Routledge.
Sutton, Z., Cardilini, A. & Hall, K. (2024) A multispecies right to the city? Reimagining the speculative narratives of urban sustainability, in Castle, N. & Champion, G. (Eds.) Animals and Science Fiction, Palgrave.
Sutton, Z. & Taylor, N. (2022) Between force and freedom: place, space and animals-as-pet-commodities, in Hodge et al. (Eds) Vegan Geographies: Ethics Beyond Violence, Lantern Press, pp. 177-198.
Sutton, Z. (2021) Researching towards a critically posthumanist future: on the political “doing” of critical research for companion animal liberation, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy.
Sutton, Z. & Taylor, N. (2019) Managing the Borders: static/dynamic nature and the ‘management’ of ‘problem’ species, Parallax, 25(4), pp. 379-394.
Taylor, N. & Sutton, Z. (2018) For an Emancipatory Animal Sociology, Journal of Sociology, 54(4), pp.467-487.
Taylor, N., Sutton, Z, & Wilkie, R. (2018) Introduction for Journal of Sociology Special Section ‘A Sociology of Multi-Species Relations?’, 54(4), pp.463-466.
