Katrina Ask

In my current position as a university lecturer, I combine teaching and research, which I find both inspiring and engaging. I primarily teach anatomy, a subject I have always been passionate about. In my role as Deputy Director of Studies (PSR), I mainly work with the development of the Veterinary Medicine program, a highly rewarding and stimulating responsibility.

Orthopedics and pain are two of my main research areas, and I am part of a larger research group at SLU with the same focus, led by Marie Rhodin, Elin Hernlund, and Pia Haubro Andersen. More information about the group’s research can be found on the website For a Long Life in Motion. In my research, I use objective and evidence-based methods to study how horses and cattle express pain, both at rest and during movement. My work focuses on improving pain recognition and animal welfare through earlier and more accurate detection of pain.

Since I started as a PhD-student at SLU in 2017, I have been involved in teaching anatomy to both veterinary and veterinary nursing students. I primarily teach anatomy of the locomotor aparatus, including clinical applications and comparative aspects, in several preclinical courses across both programs.

I supervise and examine students writing their Bachelor’s and/or Master’s theses, mainly within areas related to my research.

As Deputy Director of Studies, I (together with Director of Studies Helene Hamlin) am responsible for program-wide teaching activities, including recurring sessions on professional development (PU) throughout the Veterinary Medicine program. These sessions are designed to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and perspectives needed for a long and rewarding career in veterinary medicine.

In 2025, I was honored to receive the students’ pedagogical award from the Veterinary Medicine Association (VMF).

During my PhD, I studied behaviors and facial expressions associated with orthopedic pain in horses, and evaluated the reliability and performance of pain scales on assessing orthopedic pain.

My current research focuses on behaviors and facial expressions associated with different types of pain in large animals. A central part of my work involves developing, applying, and validating objective measurement methods—such as ethograms, pain scales, the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), and objective gait analysis—to systematically describe behavior, including movement patterns, and facial expressions. I am also interested in studying facial expressions during movement to better understand how orthopedic pain is experienced in lame animals.

Ongoing research projects in which I am involved:

• Development of an objective tool (FACS) for studying facial expressions in dairy cows, and investigation of facial expressions associated with pain during lameness and mastitis
• Mapping movement patterns in dairy cows with induced and clinical lameness
• Evaluation of the effects of Best Practice hoof trimming on dairy cow movement patterns, load distribution, and development of hoof lesions compared to traditional hoof care in Sweden
• Use of objective visual methods, such as surface electromyography and optical motion capture, to quantify subtle facial movements in horses

I also serve as a reviewer for the following journals: Scientific Reports, Animals, The Veterinary Journal, and Veterinary Medicine and Science.

To disseminate knowledge on pain recognition and assessment in horses, I have spoken at various events, including harness racing education courses at Hästsportens Folkhögskola, at the FEIF Education Seminar 2024, the Swedish Veterinary Meeting 2022, and for Folkuniversitetet. Internationally, I have recently presented in webinars organized by Arbeitsgruppe Pferd (“Diagnosis and management of pain causing poor performance or behavioral changes”) and Centaur Biomechanics.

I graduated as a veterinarian (DVM) in 2012, and have then worked in ambulatory equine and bovine practice. In 2014 I completed an internship in equine surgery and medicine, and worked as an equine veterinary surgeon in Denmark, before I started my PhD in August 2017. In January 2023, I defended my PhD thesis "The look of lameness - Behaviours and facial expressions associated with orthopedic pain in horses", and since February 2023 I am a university lecturer in anatomy.

I am co-supervisor to PhD student Maja Söderlind, who studies facial expressions in cattle.

Söderlind, M., Cain, B., Ask, K., Valarcher, J-F., Hernlund, E., Andersen, P.H., Rhodin, M. 2026. Descriptive, comparative, and functional anatomy of the facial musculature in cattle (Bos taurus). The Anatomical Record, 2026:1-33, doi: 10.1002/ar.70124

Söderlind, M., Ask, K., Leclercq, A., Åkesson, T., Valarcher, J-F., Hernlund, E., Andersen, P.H., Rhodin, M. 2025. Evaluation of a composite pain scale including facial expressions for detecting orthopedic pain in lame dairy cows. Journal of Dairy Science, 108(5), pp. 5153-5169, doi: 10.3168/jds.2024-25692

Leclercq, A., Ask, K., Mellbin, Y., Byström, A., Söderlind, M., Telezhenko, E., Bergsten, C., Andersen, P.H., Rhodin, M., Hernlund, E. 2025. Kinematic changes in dairy cows with induced, unilateral forelimb lameness during straight line walk. animal, 19(5): 101482, doi: 10.1016/j.animal.2025.101482

Leclercq, A., Ask, K., Mellbin, Y., Byström, A., Serra Bragança, F.M., Söderlind, M., Telezhenko, E., Bergsten, C., Andersen, P.H., Rhodin, M., Hernlund, E. 2024. Kinematic changes in dairy cows with induced hindlimb lameness: transferring methodology from the field of equine biomechanics. animal 101269, doi: 10.1016/j.animal.2024.101269

Smit, I.H., Mellbin, Y., Ask, K., te Moller, N.C.R., Lundblad, J. 2024. Quantifying facial expressions of the horse with optical motion capture and surface electromyography; a proof of concept. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, conference abstract.

Ask, K., Rhodin, M., Rashid-Engström, M., Hernlund, E., Andersen, P.H., 2024. Changes in the equine facial repertoire during different orthopedic pain intensities. Scientific Reports 14, 129(2024), doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-50383-y. 

Leclercq, A., Lundblad, J., Persson-Sjödin, E., Ask, K., Zetterberg, E., Hernlund, E.,  Andersen, P.H., Rhodin, M. 2023. Perceived sidedness and correlation to vertical movement asymmetries in young warmblood horses. PloS One 18(7): e0288043, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0288043

Ask, K., Andersen, P.H., Tamminen, L-T., Rhodin, M., Hernlund, E. 2022. Performance of four equine pain scales and their association to movement asymmetry in horses with induced orthopedic pain. Frontiers in Veterinary Science 9:938022, doi: 10.3389/fvets.2022.938022. 

Broome, S., Ask, K., Rashid-Engstrom, M., Andersen, P.H., Kjellström, H. 2022. Sharing pain: Using pain domain transfer for video recognition of low grade orthopedic pain in horses. PLoS ONE 17(3):e0263854, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263854. 

Tijssen, M., Serra Braganca, F.M., Ask, K., Rhodin, M., Andersen, P.H., Telezhenko, E., Bergsten, C., Nielen, M., Hernlund, E. 2022. Kinematic gait characteristics of straight line walk in clinically sound dairy cows. PLoS ONE 16(7):e0253479, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0253479. 

Rashid, M., Broome, S., Ask, K., Hernlund, E., Andersen, P.H., Kjellström, H., Lee, Y.J. 2022. Equine Pain Behavior Classification via Self-Supervised Disentangled Pose Representation. Conference: 2022 IEEE/CVF Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision (WACV), Hawaii. doi: 10.1109/WACV51458.2022.00023

Andersen, P.H., Broome, S., Rashid, M., Lundblad, J., Ask, K., Li, Z., Hernlund, E., Rhodin, M., Kjellström, H. 2021. Towards Machine Recognition of Facial Expressions of Pain in Horses. Animals 11(6):1643. doi: 10.3390/ani11061643. 

Ask, K., Rhodin, M., Tamminen, L-T., Hernlund, E., Andersen, P.H. 2020. Identification of Body Behaviors and Facial Expressions Associated with Induced Orthopedic Pain in Four Equine Pain Scales. Animals 10(11):2155. doi: 10.3390/ani10112155.

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