Short abstract

This paper examines when species become accepted as native. Drawing on ethnography of different species and their shifting positions between foreignness and acceptance, it reconsiders the tensions between scientific classifications, cultural perceptions, and ecological interpretations.

Long abstract

Species have always migrated and reshaped ecosystems, but climate change and accelerated globalization have intensified these processes, producing far-reaching ecological, social, and economic effects. Invasive species are not only scientific or environmental concerns; they also carry political and cultural meanings. Their spread is shaped by historical and contemporary power relations, as are the efforts to manage or eradicate them. Yet despite extensive scholarship, species continue to be framed through a rigid native/alien dichotomy.

This presentation, part of a broader project on cultural attitudes toward alien and invasive species, examines the cultural and political implications of determining when an alien species becomes native. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Israel–Palestine among scientists, environmental activists, farmers, and local residents, it analyzes the tensions between scientific classifications and everyday perceptions.

Focusing on debates surrounding eucalyptus trees and common mynas, the talk shows how different species occupy distinct positions along a shifting matrix between acceptance and estrangement. These cases complicate taken-for-granted categories of nativeness, alienness, and invasion.

Engaging more-than-human theory and the anthropology of emotions, the study highlights how perceptions of species are shaped by temporal depth, cultural symbolism, spatial visibility, and assessments of material harm. By foregrounding these dimensions, the presentation proposes a more fluid understanding of nativeness and foreignness, and invites a broader reconsideration of acceptance, acclimatization, and exclusion in socio-political contexts.

Short abstract

This paper examines how invasion biologists decide which knowledge to trust or ignore. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it develops a reception-oriented model of scientific trust, showing how evaluation practices shape scientific work on possible ecological threats.

Long abstract

This paper examines epistemic practices in invasion biology by analyzing how scientists make decisions about using epistemic resources. Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in two invasion biology research groups (2–3 months each) and ten expert interviews, I investigate how scientists evaluate and receive knowledge in everyday research practice.

Building on these empirical findings, I develop a reception-oriented model of scientific trust. Rather than treating trust as an individual attitude or as a property of knowledge itself, the model conceptualizes trust as an interpretative scheme that orientates decisions about the use of epistemic resources. The model considers how scientists assess data, methods, collaborators, and institutional contexts when deciding whether knowledge becomes usable within their own work.

The paper argues that invasion biology is shaped not only through knowledge production, but also through practices of reception that determine which knowledge is integrated or ignored. By foregrounding reception as a part of active epistemic practices, this study highlights how scientific knowledge is continuously negotiated through everyday decisions about credibility and usability.

Invasion biology provides a particularly productive site for examining these dynamics, as the field operates at the intersection of ecological uncertainty, public controversy, and future-oriented environmental governance. The findings show how trust-based reception practices shape the interpretation of ecological change and which forms of intervention become thinkable or legitimate.

The paper contributes to STS debates on scientific trust and epistemic regimes. It further shows how reception practices participate in shaping possible futures of living with ecological change and so-called invasive species.

Short abstract

The powerful dualisms of nature/cultures run deep within invasion ecology. Queer ecofeminism and ecology have long since grappled with these power structures. Drawing on the example of ecological history of (in part invasive) oysters in the Wadden Sea, this paper proposes to read them together.

Long abstract

The powerful dualisms of nature/cultures run deep within invasion ecology, with most definitions of invasive species heavily relying on essentializing ideas of good nature against bad. In the following paper, I sketch out a way to a more nuanced understanding of ecology and nature by presenting the ecological history of oysters on the shores of Sylt, Germany.

In the 19th century a decline in European oyster stocks due to overfishing in Germany, and Sylt in particular, prompted scientific inquiries resulting in one of the first precursors of ecological relationality. Although regulations were put in place, the oyster went extinct around Sylt and in the 1980s Pacific oysters were introduced as an economic replacement. By 2001, the wild oyster population had built up over 100,000 tons of biomass and was labelled invasive in 2013. However, the major concerns regarding the oyster did not come to pass. Oyster reefs around Sylt now contribute a stable habitat for many new species, although some of them are labelled invasive. The long-term impact on the ecosystem remains uncertain, but some have called for accepting the oyster as a legitimate part of the Wadden Sea.

Drawing on the work of queer ecofeminists and queer ecologists Greta Gaard, Donna Haraway, and Catriona Sandilands, this paper shows the entangled becoming of the science of (invasion) ecology and oysters. The insights of these scholars can help us in facing invasives differently, because they grapple with the powerful co-productions of ecology and nature foundational to the issues of invasive species.

Short abstract

The paper argues that community-led eucalyptus eradication reveals invasion as a socio-political and cultural issue, where local practices redefine care, belonging, and desired more-than-human relations beyond scientific notions of nativeness.

Long abstract

Recent humanities scholarship has questioned how humans might coexist with so-called invasive species, particularly amid large-scale eradication programs and troubling discourses of nativeness and purity that echo beyond ecology. This paper examines a situated case of community-led eradication in a northwestern Iberian region where eucalyptus (globulus and nitens) expanded rapidly during the late twentieth century. The spread of these trees was not merely ecological but politically driven: industrial pulp production and the displacement of rural communities from common lands enabled extensive monoculture afforestation. As a result, eucalyptus coverage increased dramatically over several decades and now occupies a substantial portion of the regional landscape.

Despite longstanding ecological concerns, including biodiversity loss, altered fire regimes, and hydrological impacts, regional authorities have avoided classifying eucalyptus as invasive because of its economic value. Over the past decade, however, grassroots groups have organized volunteer brigades to remove eucalyptus independently of state initiatives, actively employing the invasive species discourse. Yet, their actions frame eradication not as a technocratic intervention but as a form of communal landscape restoration and care.

By analyzing these practices ethnographically, the paper contributes to critical invasion studies by shifting attention from scientific definitions of nativeness to locally grounded meanings of belonging. Recasting biological invasion as a more-than-biological phenomenon raises broader questions about which human and more-than-human communities are desired, by whom, and according to what historical, cultural, and political imaginaries.

Short abstract

This paper traces the history of the Marion Island cat eradication program (1977-1993), probing the South African Apartheid-era management strategies for responding to species invasion in a biodiversity hotspot and the vexing questions this episode presents for conservation histories more generally.

Long abstract

The remote, sub-Antarctic Marion Island, an offshore territorial possession of South Africa dating back to its annexation in 1948, represents a crucial node in Southern Ocean bird and mammal ecologies. But from the early years after annexation until their full eradication in the early 1990s, a population of initially human-introduced cats roamed the island, dramatically disrupting the breeding cycles of bird species that relied on the remote island’s location in the larger Southern Ocean region. Within the South African National Antarctic Program (SANAP), the Marion Island cat eradication program has become the stuff of lore, while in the larger conservation literature, it’s noted as a particularly comprehensive success in efforts to cull an invasive mammal species. At the same time, the program represents a curious case, one in which links between invasive species management and the military language of invasion weren’t just discursive or analogical but entailed the explicit material leveraging of military capacities. Specifically, the program recruited members of South Africa’s late-Apartheid armed forces into the team of “cat hunters,” drawing on the skills these “cat hunters” had developed working to preserve white rule in Southern Africa to carry out the necro-labor of conservation. Tracing the history of the Marion Island cat eradication program, this talk asks what kinds of unsettling questions the program and its historical reception raise for thinking the socially and politically situated character of invasion and conservation science, highlighting their imbrication in this instance with the militarized socio-ecological management strategies of an Apartheid state.

Short abstract

The presentation examines the performative effect of seeking zero pests in eradication projects and how this shapes how pests are framed and how pest eradication projects are designed, communicated and implemented, including how technology is both developed and deployed.

Long abstract

New Zealand accounts for nearly 25% of the world’s uninhabited island pest eradication attempts. Buoyed by successes from these uninhabited island eradications, biologists are now seeking to undertake pest eradications at scale on inhabited islands. Indeed in New Zealand, ‘predator free’ is a national vision with the aim for the country to be free of all rats, stoats, possums and feral cats by 2050. New Zealand is now a leading exporter of mammalian eradication knowledge, technologies and operational know-how to governments and NGOs across the world who are directing substantial funds towards landscape-scale invasive species eradication.

To be ‘Pest-Free’ requires a biological endpoint of zero target pests in a specific location over a specified timeframe. When eradication is sought and funded, the focus is on pest kills and an outcome of pest suppression only, is typically deemed a project failure by funders. This presentation draws from examples from around the world to examine how the current eradication paradigm with the biological end point of zero pests, shapes how pests are framed and how pest eradication projects are designed, communicated and implemented, including how technology is both developed and deployed. The presentation reveals that the increasing focus on zero pests in eradication projects, limits the involvement of communities, social scientists, humanities and indigenous knowledge-holders therefore restricting the opportunity for important ‘entanglements’ in the new alliances that are formed in eradication projects. The presentation argues for more critical reflection on the performative effect of seeking zero pests in eradication projects.

Short abstract

Based on walking interviews with amateur gardeners, this paper uses framing theory, theories of the stranger, and a more-than-human lens to explore how situated affective practices shape which species, from slugs to ground elder, are made killable, grievable, or tolerable in domestic gardens.

Long abstract

Invasive species are increasingly present in domestic gardens. Yet how amateur gardeners affectively and morally negotiate the species’ status remains underexplored in STS and environmental sociology. Although invasion biology provides classificatory frameworks, these do not account for the visceral, reflexive, and often contradictory ways gardeners construct organisms as belonging or not belonging (Shackleton et al., 2019). This paper addresses the gap between institutional species classifications and situated affective practices through which non-belonging is produced and contested in everyday garden life. Our aim is to consider the affective and classificatory processes through which certain species are rendered killable, grievable, or tolerable.

The analysis is based on in-depth walking interviews with 26 amateur gardeners in southern Sweden, examined using reflexive thematic analysis and a more-than-human lens. Our tentative findings reveal that gardeners co-construct a layered moral hierarchy shaped by disgust, dread, and aesthetic ambivalence in interactions with nonhumans. While species like Spanish slugs, box tree moths, and ground elder are rendered “killable” (Haraway, 2008) through visceral distaste and escalating, routinised violence, other creatures’ statuses are more muddled and inconclusive. Statuses are shaped by boundary work involving both humans and nonhumans. The paper draws parallels between invasive species and patterns of social exclusion, questioning the arbitrariness of classification categories (Coates, 2006; Ginn, 2014; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017).

These findings suggest that invasion management in domestic settings operates not only through ecological rationality, but also through affective framing practices whose structure mirrors broader social inclusion, exclusion, and the production of the stranger.

Short abstract

This workshop inquires how to live with “invasive” species through the means of postcards. This medium invites us to question instances and visual tourist communication of conservation work where killing-as-caring becomes a mundane practice and ingrained part of eco-touristic landscapes.

Long abstract

The question how we may live with “alien invasive” species has been discussed in multispecies STS, particularly in the context of scientific research. What has received relatively less scholarly attention is how humans’ relationships with such negatively connoted species is conveyed and cultivated to tourists, particularly in areas with heavy eco-tourism like Aotearoa New Zealand. Some research identifies differing tourists’ perspectives from mainstream conservation narratives and argues for more targeted communication with tourists to increase management success and conservation awareness (Lovelock et al. 2022). Meanwhile, researchers have paid less attention to how tourist and public communication of “invasive” species normalize “killing as caring” (Kung 2026) to cultivate a specific kind of conservation awareness.

This workshop engages the question how to live with species cast as enemies by creating/writing postcards that communicate this ethos of killing-as-care. Rather than surveys or interviews, it engages a more visceral, visual scholarly inquiry by sending postcards from “invaded” environments. By offering postcards created from eco-tourist hotspots across Aotearoa, panelists are invited to submit images from their research fields that communicate invasiveness, traps on hikes, and other instances of public engagement in killing-as-care. Prior to the workshop, the organizers will create postcards with these images and play them back to participants to reflect on these moments and spaces of culling “invasive” species. The messages written on these postcards are intended to evoke lived, ethnographic moments in which killing becomes a mundane, unquestioned practice, and part of eco-touristic landscapes that underpin a conservation culture.

Short abstract

Tipu and jacaranda trees have been introduced for landscaping in 30+ cities, thus eliciting a wide range of perceptions. Taking six cities as case studies, this workshop invites a discussion about introduction history, cultural integration and management of invasive species in urban areas worldwide.

Long abstract

The use of non-native species in urban arborization is, to a higher or lesser extent, a controversial issue in different cities. Producing a visually striking combination of yellow and bright purple flowers, tipu and jacaranda trees have been introduced in tamdem to streets and parks of more than 30 cities around the globe. Since the first introdutions in the mid-19th century, the presence of these trees has elicited a wide range of bio-cultural interactions, perceptions, and folklore. Taking these two trees as focal points, this workshop invites a discussion about the role of introduction histories in shaping people's perceptions, cultural integration, and management strategies directed at non-native and invasive species in urban areas. To do so, six cities will be used as case studies: Barcelona (Spain), Brisbane (Australia), Mexico City (Mexico), Pretoria (South Africa), San Diego (USA), and São Paulo (Brazil). First, a visual summary of the introduction history of tipu and jacaranda trees in each of these cities will be presented. Then, participants will be given flashcards containing newspaper clippings, excerpts of literary and academic work, as well as data published by municipal authorities about the two trees. After some time for discussion in small groups, all participants will then be invited to share their peceptions and experiences with the larger group and the panel of invasion ecology scientists.

Short abstract

Bark beetle outbreaks contributed to a massive dieback of spruce in Germany. This proposal examines the insect’s role in timber material flows. Framed as disaster, it drives uncertainty yet prompts shifts to more diverse forests and reconsideration of agency beyond external human planning.

Long abstract

Timber construction is increasingly promoted as a key solution for making (urban) construction more climate-friendly. Beneath this seemingly straightforward solution, however, lie significant uncertainties related to the forests supplying the timber. For the tree species most commonly used in construction, conifers, particularly spruce, one key source of uncertainty is the outbreak of bark beetles. Although these insects play an important role in decomposing wood within diverse forest ecosystems, they have gained the status of invasive in commercial monoculture forests. The combination of single-species stands, climate-change and storms has enabled their rapid spread, leading to the loss of approximately half a million hectares of spruce forest in Germany between 2018 and 2021.

As a trained architect, I investigate the material flows of timber through an STS perspective. Drawing on ongoing ethnography of German forest region of Sauerland, I examine how bark beetle outbreaks are framed as disasters yet also drive the transition toward more resilient mixed forests. The response to the outbreaks is not purely managerial but deeply cultural and historical, rooted in the understanding of trees as resources, destined to fulfil specific goals and intensified by ambitions to expand timber construction. The beetle’s presence thus prompts a reconsideration of agency within the material flow, resonating with Barad’s notion of intra-action rather than externally imposed human, predictable planning (Barad, 2007).