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Paper short abstract

We present our embedded STS study of an interdisciplinary biodiversity renewal project, rethinking ecological practice through a ‘people in nature’ (PiN) approach. We place PiN in dialogue with MTH concepts to analyse multiple positionings of human-environment relations in 21st century conservation

Paper long abstract

It has become commonplace to assert that interdisciplinary research is necessary to address ecological disruption, yet *how* to collaborate in practice, particularly with more-than-humans, remains uncertain. This paper discusses an embedded STS study of a large-scale biodiversity renewal research project that is rethinking ecological practice through a ‘people in nature’ (PiN) approach (IUCN, 2016). Through this relational move, the project is advancing a wider step-change in ecology and conservation science, away from traditional approaches protecting a 'nature' that is conceptually and materially separated from humanity. However, in a biodiversity project that (unusually) involves significant and heterogeneous involvements with humanities and social science (HASS) scholars, a multitude of ideas theorising human-environment relations rub up against each other.

Thinking explicitly across PiN and ‘more-than-human’ (MTH) concepts, this paper examines how shared ideas about agency, relationality and care are conceptualised and implemented in multiple ways across the project. While PiN approaches often explore individualised human-nature relationalities, in the project the term functions as a strategic umbrella repositioning people *within* ecosystems, creating a broader space for productive dialogue with other concepts including political ecology, environmental justice, ecopoetry, ecosystem services and STS inflected MTH. While understandings of agency and relationality vary drastically across the project, care, in its different ethical stances, for and towards the environment has emerged as a shared obligation that drives research. We tentatively argue that this approach is changing practices of ecology in unexpected ways and reflect on the negotiations and tensions of human-nature relationalities in impact-focused environmental research.