Short Abstract

This Making and Doing explores more-than-human research (mthr) through collective experimentation with methods. Participants test example protocols, design new approaches, and probe the limits of human sensing and alternative tools, extending attunement and unknowing to the analysis of mthr data.

Description

While it is now well accepted in the social sciences that more-than-human relations are a critical area for research, the development of related research methods still lag behind (c.f. Ulmer 2017). Many scholars agree that more-than-human research (mthr) demands a radical shift—not only theoretically but practically—raising a key question for the actual doing of it: how can the human be decentered if the human still holds the lens? Indeed, most non-human life-worlds operate at scales beyond human perception. Studying mth relations demands a shift in modes of awareness, a type of sensory attunement (Tsing 2024), a “tuning in” (Gibson 2018), or “learning to be affected” (Gorman and Andrews 2022), alongside a critical reassessment of the limits of qualitative methods (c.f. Law 2004), which have long become sedimented.

Drawing from work-in-progress as part of the Lively Lab at the University of Oulu and a related PhD course on mthr praxis, this Making and Doing focuses on a collective experimentation and play with mthr methods. In these sessions, we first present example “protocols” demonstrating possibilities for enacting mthr in practice. Participants will then design other potential methods, putting them to work in and around the local area. In doing so, we ask such questions as: what are the limits of human sensing and perception, and what role do new or alternative sensory tools and technologies play? We also take inspiration from work in anthropology on unknowing, “unsettlement” (Kearney 2025), and “not-knowing” (Espirito Santo, Murray, Salinas 2023), as they pertain to human-centric imaginations of unknown and unknowable futures—futures that are always already entangled with mth life-worlds. In the final portion of this Making and Doing, we sketch a means for analysis that extends attunement and unknowing into tools for navigating and making sense of mthr data, including partial and tentative observations, interactions and sensory recordings.