Nelly Lakestani PhD

I have a BSc in Zoology and Psychology from the University of Reading. I then moved to Edinburgh to do the MSc in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare and my PhD (A study of dog bites and their prevention).

Before moving to the University of Lincoln I was working on a collaborative project between the Scottish Agricultural College and the University of Edinburgh on promoting a 'Duty of Care' towards animals among young people. Then I moved to Brussels to do an internship at the Animal Welfare Unit of the European Commission where I learned a lot about the Unit and the work they do. I helped with various tasks such as the development and promotion of a European website on animal welfare for children, organisation of conferences on animal welfare in Europe and in Third Countries with international organisations and management of activities related to the publication of proceedings and supportive materials related to international activities. I am still collaborating with them as an external expert as part of the stirring committee for Animal Welfare Education. Last year we helped with the organisation of the International Conference on Animal Welfare Education, which took place in Brussels on the 1-2 October 2010.

Background	I have a BSc in Zoology and Psychology from the University of Reading. I then moved to Edinburgh to do the MSc in Applied Animal Behaviour and Welfare and my PhD (A study of dog bites and their prevention). Before moving to the University of Lincoln I was working on a collaborative project between the Scottish Agricultural College and the University of Edinburgh on promoting a 'Duty of Care' towards animals among young people. Then I moved to Brussels to do an internship at the Animal Welfare Unit of the European Commission where I learned a lot about the Unit and the work they do. I helped with various tasks such as the development and promotion of a European website on animal welfare for children, organisation of conferences on animal welfare in Europe and in Third Countries with international organisations and management of activities related to the publication of proceedings and supportive materials related to international activities. I am still collaborating with them as an external expert as part of the stirring committee for Animal Welfare Education. Last year we helped with the organisation of the International Conference on Animal Welfare Education, which took place in Brussels on the 1-2 October 2010.
My Research interests	I am interested in human-animal interaction in general and cross cultural studies. My PhD was focused on dog bite prevention and how children interpret dog behaviour. I investigated factors involved with the occurrence of dog bite accidents in children and ways to educate them in order to prevent these accidents. It consisted of evaluating, at a European level, children of different age groups’ ability to interpret live dog behaviour. I carried out my research in Italy, Spain and the U.K. and compared the performance of 430 school children aged 4-10 year olds and 120 adults. The results indicated that younger children have poor abilities in interpreting dog behaviour (in particular fear), and that they focus on single facial features when deciding the state of the dog, rather than attending to a combination of features as older children do (e.g. face and tail, or tail and body movement) - see BPS press release. This led me to design the next study based on the idea that educating children on how to interpret dog behaviour should help reduce dog bite accidents. I therefore created a short educational programme and showed that such a programme could be effective in teaching four year old children about dog behaviour. I am currently working on two main topics: Dog Bite Prevention: We are evaluating the Blue Dog which is an interactive programme teaching young children how to behave safely with their dogs. We aim to assess the effectiveness of the intervention for 3 to 5 year old children in terms of behavioural changesand not only in terms of how well they have learned the information in the intervention, as is often done in other intervention studies. Animal Welfare Education: I am looking at the effect of using the “Tierschutz Macht Schule” booklet on farm animals, made for teaching children about farm animals and their needs. This project looks at children’s attitudes to farm animals, as well as their knowledge acquisition of the material taught. The first step of this project was implementing and testing the effectiveness of the programme in schools in Mexico, future steps will involve doing the same in more countries.

Publications	Lakestani,N, Donaldson, M, Verga, M and Waran, N. (2011). Attitudes of children and adults to dogs in Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research 6, 121-129. Lakestani N, Donaldson M, Verga M and Waran N (submitted). "Dog bite accidents: children misinterpret dog behaviour". Gavinelli A, Lakestani N , 2010. Animal Welfare in Europe. Derecho Animal Web Center. Muldoon J, Williams J, Lawrence A, Lakestani N and Currie C, 2009. Promoting a ‘Duty of Care’ Towards Animals Among Children and Young People: A literature review and findings from initial research to inform the development of interventions. Report PDF. Lakestani N, 2007. Children and Dogs: how do children interpret dog behaviour. Proceedings of GSAVA annual congress, Berlin, 215-220. Waran N and Lakestani N, 2006. Dog bites in children: A review of results from a recent European and New Zealand study. Urban Animal Management Conference Proceedings, 67-69. Lakestani N, Waran N, Verga M and Phillips C, 2005. Dog Bites in Children. European Journal of Companion Animal Practice, 15 (2), 133-135.
Conferences	Invited speaker "Children’s ability to read dog behaviour", Lincoln University, Department of Biological Sciences Seminar, October 2008. "Child-dog interaction", 53rd annual congress of the German Small Animal Veterinary Association, Berlin, November 2007. "Children’s understanding of dog behaviour", Association of Pet Behaviour Counselors’ conference, Cirencester, June 2007. "Dog Bites in Children", Voorjaarsdagen International Veterinary Congress, Amsterdam, April 2005. Standard oral paper presentation "Preschool children’s attitudes to dogs in Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom." International Veterinary Behaviour Meeting, Edinburgh, October 2010. Proceedings in: Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 5 (1); 56-57. "Dog bite prevention: effect of a short educational intervention on preschool children." International Association of Human Animal Interaction Organisations, Tokyo, October 2007. Poster presentation "Evaluation of an Animal Welfare Education Programme" International Conference on Animal Welfare Education, October 2010 "How is Fido feeling? Developmental changes in the ability to assess dogs’ emotional states", British Psychological Society, Developmental Section Conference, September 2009. "Keeping Children Safe: How reliable are children at interpreting dog behaviour?", 40th International Congress of the International Society For Applied Ethology, Britstol, August 2006.
Links to interesting websites	University of Lincoln Babylab The Blue Dog European Commission Animal Welfare Page International Conference on Animal Welfare Education Gateway to Farm Animal Welfare- FAO Dialrel project - Encouraging dialogue on issues of religious slaughter