Presentation short abstract

This multimodal presentation explores how both people and olive trees in Tunisia shape visual, historical, and ecological ways of knowing. I examine how multispecies specificities appear—and are co-created—through guided and spontaneous acts of seeing.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation explores how visual practices—being shown, guided, staged, and surprised—shape anthropological multispecies understandings of Tunisian olive trees beyond their value in yield.

I present two audiovisual vignettes in which the olive tree appears in photographs, one on purpose, the other less so, considering how these portrayed olive trees are co-producers of relational, historical, and ecological knowledge. As I am in the process of making my own ethnographic-botanical illustration, I wonder how these portrayals can guide my own film-making practice about a highly-productive olive tree in Tunisia.

The first story is a guided encounter with olive trees by a Tunisian photographer who has been traveling for a decade now across the country to look for his ‘treasures’, millennial olive trees. By showing me his photographic collection he dives into the long, resilient life of trees that exceed Eurocentric narratives of agricultural progress. Here, the photograph becomes a companion to multispecies pedagogy: a way of seeing-with trees as historical subjects rather than static resources.

The second story shows a moment in which an olive tree appeared as an aesthetic backdrop in a photo-album of family life in Southern Tunisia. It reoriented my attention toward the material pressures shaping these relations—particularly water scarcity across southern Tunisia. Multispecies textures become visible through affective and situated acts of noticing.

As I am in the process of making my own ethnographic-botanical illustration on a highly-productive olive tree in Tunisia, I end with asking how these portrayals can guide my own film-making practice and anthropological research.

Presentation long abstract

Recent far-right tendencies among Dutch farmers have highlighted the central role of culture and particularly historical imaginaries in the agricultural debate. Whether it stems from a fear of allying with a problematic history or the right’s victory in ‘claiming’ the past, eco-socialist activists and political ecology researchers based in Europe have largely refrained from drawing on past imaginaries when prefigurating a post-agroindustrial future. For the counter-hegemonic ‘Agroecologie Netwerk’ and research in support of the agroecological agenda, this is a missed opportunity in light of the fact, that cultural belonging and relationships with the land are central in the agroecological worldview.

Dutch folk songs contain imaginaries that align with agroecology despite their conservative association. Struggles around land, rural livehoods and labour have been central in farmers’ experiences well before the industrial transformation of agriculture. Engaging with folk music further allows for the importance of centering emotions, aesthetics and storytelling in movement-building. This research therefore aims to investigate how the reinterpretation of old Dutch folk songs can contribute to agroecological imaginaries through ‘postfiguration’. A fellow musician who works in Toekomstboeren, the Dutch branch of La Via Campesina, and I have long pondered on the idea of making an album for the agroecological movement containing reinterpretations of old Dutch folk songs. This has already been done by the English Landworker’s alliance in 2021, which illustrates the political potential of folk reinterpretation. The research will result in a MSc thesis and the recording of this album, which will take place in June 2026.

Presentation short abstract

This presentation explores what multispecies storytelling can tell us about displaced food systems. It draws on narrative and participatory research with farmers (2024-2026) enduring displacement in the West Nile sub-region of Northern Uganda.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation explores what multispecies storytelling can tell us about displaced food systems. It draws on narrative and participatory research with farmers (2024-2026) enduring displacement in the West Nile sub-region of Northern Uganda. Taking a historical approach to shifting plant relations, the presentation traces the colonial introduction of cassava, a hardy but potentially toxic root crop. Working with the specificity of cassava’s capacity for cyanogenic exposure demanded a fundamental reorientation of agricultural labour and new forms of multi-species collaboration and care in northwestern Uganda. This piecemeal, experimental, and sensory process generated embodied forms of multispecies knowing and risk. Listening to the stories people tell us about cassava reveals an archive of bodily sensations which unfold below the radar of hunger, but which reoriented agricultural and household labour in relation to the crop. During later periods of cross-border displacement, whilst farmers often explained that ‘cassava saved us’, the fraught encounters with planty agencies and the chemical qualities of the crop’s ‘defence’ system acquired new resonance. The crop’s ability to thrive in the absence of human carers provided vital forms of sustenance during displacement and return. Taking plant attributes seriously draws out the vegetal drives which shape displacement mobilities, allows space for the volatility of high-stakes plant-human collaborations, and the interwovenness of human and plant space-times.

Presentation short abstract

The research discusses the introduction of invasive carp species in the Danube river of Romania and Bulgaria, undertaking the notion of "multispecies deep mapping" to explore the histories, movements, traces and stories of fish and fisherman.

Presentation long abstract

The Danube River has shaped human and nonhuman interactions of the Balkan populations since antiquity. The political economies of 20th century (Dorondel, 2016) have reshaped the traditional ontologies of fish and fishing with the arrival of new species such as the American catfish, Chinese carp, and various freshwater shrimp from the Amur River that are now replacing Danube’s indigenous species. The research discusses the introduction of three invasive species – grass carp, silver carp and bighead carp in Romania and Bulgaria during the Socialist regime (1960-s) and the ways they reshape the local ecologies, knowledge, food cultures and resources. Fish and fishermen, in this process, are examined via their own stories, which overlap and interact in time and space (in the land-water interface, Pauwelussen and Verschoor, 2017) to shape knowledge and ways of knowing of human and nonhuman worlds. Undertaking the notion of deep mapping as a “cartography of depth” and a way of “diving within” (Roberts, 2016) the research offers an exploration of these worlds in a form of “multispecies deep maps”, a result of “observing, listening, conversing, and exchanging” information with fishermen, biologists and ultimately fish, following and mapping their histories, movements, traces and stories along the Danube river of Romania and Bulgaria.

Presentation short abstract

This work draws on new materialism and archival records to historise the political ecology of Xhosa umqombothi beer. Transformed from sorghum to maize through colonial and apartheid rule, this living food sheds light on the politics of altering materialities and relations in food assemblages.

Presentation long abstract

New materialist perspectives on food can be approached through thinking such as “nurturing of the natural” (Brenton, 2004); how human-nonhuman relations through food alter conditions of existence, and in turn, change food itself. This work concretises such thinking through (his)storising umqombothi – one (Xhosa South African) of the many forms of indigenous beer present throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. Beers are lively foods, where human relations to microbes, crops, water and vessels make (food) materialities, in turn ruled by the “thing-power” of those other-than-human things (Bennett, 2010). Traditionally, umqombothi was sorghum-based, but through a complex of colonial and apartheid politics rendering maize the staple crop, it has been transformed into a sorghum-maize beer - as well as swiftness, control and cleanliness. What was previously a week-long process in collaboration with weather, microorganisms, human labour, grains and tools, is now a speedy 3-day affair through the composition of stable products where unruly fermentation can be commanded. However, this new umqombothi poses toxicological risks to its humans, aptly illustrating the inseparable nature of relations and materialities of foods. Maize (and modernity) makes umqombothi anew, and alters the political ecologies of this food. Drawing on historical records I aim to use umqombothi as a lens to understand how the intertwining of food and politics have impacted contemporary farming realities in South Africa.

Presentation short abstract

The spotted lanternfly (SLF) is frequently positioned as an ecological nemesis, but for beekeepers in the U.S., the honey that comes from SLF honeydew offers something beneficial and through which to view dynamic relations of care and insect invasiveness alike.

Presentation long abstract

In this article, I use lanternfly honey as a prism to explore the economic and ecological entanglements of living with invasivity among the more-than-human world. As the spotted lanternfly (SLF) spreads across the US, public messaging tends to frame it as an ecological nemesis that demands eradication and strict control measures. Yet the lanternfly’s honeydew (excretions) also can result in a bountiful production of spotted lanternfly honey, made by honeybees. This honey has rapidly arisen as a new commercially successful varietal for local beekeepers. Through qualitative research interviews with the beekeeping community, we explored the socio-ecological entanglements surrounding the honey and beekeepers’ relationality with spotted lanternflies. Broadly, we argue that beekeepers are learning to live with other species amid changing perceptions of insect invasiveness, and suggest an openness to experimentation and changing aesthetics as features of a movement towards greater ecological reconciliation, even in uncertain and precarious ecological contexts.

Presentation short abstract

Urban Agriculture is an increasingly accessible and beneficial “agri-food world”. Yet the extent to which this growing community truly engages with the wider multispecies world is debated in this research, which utilises a Multispecies Justice lens to investigate its transformational potential.

Presentation long abstract

Against a backdrop of rising urbanisation, food insecurity and nature loss; demand for growing food in cities increases. Specifically in the UK, recent interest in Urban Agriculture (UA) has been driven by the success of campaign groups, with the “Right to Grow” increasingly embedded in local policy. My research centres around the case study of Hull and East Riding, with Hull being the first local authority to embed the right to grow within local policy. In our rapidly urbanising planet, UA is an increasingly accessible “agri-food world” with multifunctional benefits including health, food security and nature recovery. Yet the extent to which this growing community truly engages with the wider multispecies world is debated in this research, which utilises a Multispecies Justice (MSJ) lens to investigate the transformational potential of UA to nature recovery policy.

MSJ is inspired by multiple approaches: including environmental justice movements, animal rights activism, political ecology and posthumanism. MSJ’s appeal is its capacity to analyse complex human-nonhuman relationships and centre the rights of non-humans within the wider justice concepts of fair resource distribution, representation and agency. Specifically, here, I analyse how UA connects with stories of multispecies justice beyond the socially-politically and ecologically constructed boundaries of urban food growing sites.

I will present part of my multidisciplinary research design in an embodied and interactive style. The presentation will engage creatively with ecological mapping and examine whether UA can actively build multispecies bridges of care, connection and justice across boundaries, and explore implications to nature recovery policy.

Presentation short abstract

This paper focuses on the relations between microbes and humans in sourdough-making, following some practices and knowledges around experimenting and caring for, and working together with sourdough microbes. It thus explores doing human-microbial interactions in post-Pasteurian worlds.

Presentation long abstract

Fermented products, among them not just kimchi, kombucha and kefir but also sourdoughs, have become trendy in the last years. Age-old food-making traditions turn into modern practices: their role for healthy and sustainable lives and their effect on microbiome, skin and overall health is emphasized, and increasingly, younger generations turn to consume or even make fermented products at home – echoing the wider shift from pasteurized societies (Latour, 1988) to post-Pasteurian worlds (Lorimer, 2020; Paxson, 2008). Working with fermented products, though, can be fragile and inherently relies on more-than-human communication with microbes, such as looking for signs of microbial action, attuning to microbial needs, and tinkering with ingredients and processes (Hey, 2021; Pintér, 2025; Sariola, 2021). In consequence, a form of experimenting care when working with microbial actors is necessary, both in commercial settings and in kitchens at home.

In this contribution, I use autoethnographic experiences and visual material to take a closer look at the relations between microbes and humans in sourdough-making. Hence, this contribution follows some practices and knowledges around experimenting and caring for and working together with sourdough microbes, highlighting the fragile relations between humans, microbes, environment and cultural knowledge. It explores how forms of experimentality and care provide new perspectives of doing human-microbial interactions, understanding nature-culture relations, and potentially contribute to forming community- and solidarity-oriented practices for humans and more-than-humans.

Presentation short abstract

How do direct democratic practices shape our local communities when taking all living species into account? We will speak to the challenges and possibilities that such practices entail as a collective of artivist-researchers, through collective registering, documenting and analyzing compost actions.

Presentation long abstract

We participate as artivists in self-organised/governed groups in Buenos Aires. We take care of obtaining the barrelsfor composting through donations, we clean them, drill holes for drainage, manually cut and place a wooden lid, decorate them and inaugurate the compost bin in a neighbourhood spot, cared for by a volunteer neighbour. Over 24 months, we have inaugurated 10 composting bins, and harvested very many times. We find this an iterative process: it repeats itself over and over, and yet it is different each time. We collectively document our actions as art-practitioners of research and a constant learning process is at play. Our process shows that: 1) we preserve the collective memory of the territories we inhabit, since each neighbor group that gets started, follows the thread of another existing group, and yet recreates its way; 2) from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, ideas, knowledge, things and animals (human and more than human) continue to be regenerated, and taken care of; 3) collective composting activities become opportunities to take back the streets, the sidewalks, the open small public spaces that belong to all by practices of care, and also pose questions and challenges to our taken-for-granted urban ways of living; 4) we exercise the possibility of carrying out practices of reproduction of life which, through art and culture, different than the capital-centric, exclusive and privatising proposal that proceeds by fencing off and closing territories. In doing this work, we have created an ethnographically based, theoretically grounded composting-research perspective. 

Presentation short abstract

We examine soil’s ontological politics in Oceania through clam harvesting in Solomon Islands mangroves and compost co-production in Aotearoa. Through political ecology and Indigenous materialist approaches, we show soil’s affective, relational agency and its role in decolonizing agri-food relations.

Presentation long abstract

Soil within agri-food systems is often considered substrate, a backdrop to the agri-food landscapes it sustains. Or it is positioned with technical sciences of nutrient, carbon or toxin mapping, that which absorbs or holds imagined foreign substrates. What is made opaque in these instrumental constructions is that there are many ways of (re)storying which take seriously a restoring of liveliness of soil (Krzywosynska 2019). In this presentation, we theorize soil’s ontological politics within agri-food systems in Oceania, drawing from empirical data of: harvesting mangrove clams from muddy flats in the Solomon Islands, and, co-producing compost with soil microbes for Indigenous and community gardens in Aotearoa New Zealand. In these very different contexts we theoretically position soil through the lenses of political ecology of the body (Hayes-Conroy & Hayes-Conroy 2015) and Indigenous materialist theories (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo 2001), which captures both the affective and relational agency of soil and the political edge of socially-differentiated experiences of these relatings/relationality. Such decolonizing work, with and in these specific soil agri-food relations, are and become affective and visceral knowings of land, relations and accountability.

Gegeo, D. W., & Watson-Gegeo, K. A. (2001). “How we know”: Kwara’ae rural villagers doing indigenous epistemology.” The Contemporary Pacific, 13(1), 55–88.

Hayes-Conroy, A., & Hayes-Conroy, J. (2015). “Political ecology of the body: A visceral approach.” In The international handbook of political ecology.

Krzywoszynska, A. (2019). “Caring for Soil Life in the Anthropocene: The Role of Attentiveness in More-Than-Human Ethics.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 44 (4): 661–675.