New!
Multispecies Futures Global Institute 

The Multispecies Futures Global Institute is an exciting new initiative of the lab.

It serves a double-mission: to bring the lab to the world and the world to the lab. 

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Via a nomadic and rhizomatic approach and strategy, this new global arm of the lab aims to foster future generations of transdisciplinary Multispecies Studies scholars in different parts of the world. It seeks to boost innovative research, teaching, policy and community engagement on a planet that is rapidly facing the collapse of important natural and cultural systems.

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    The Institute is designed to: 1) disseminate foundational Multispecies Studies concepts, methods and transdisciplinary approaches in the Environmental and Critical Digital Humanities and Media and Cultural Studies internationally, while also 2) providing opportunities for the lab to learn from bioculturally-rich contexts and communities around the world, and bring these valuable case-studies back to students at the lab's home-base in California.

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What will the experience be like?​

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The Institute's intensive itinerant workshops and symposia aim to provide more equitable access to lab concepts and methods while simultaneously co-creating place- and space-specific naturalcultural knowledge together with local experts, both human and non.

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     Typically designed as a four/five-day intensive program, the Institute will convene every year in different global location(s), bringing together university students, scholars, and ecocultural practitioners to engage with multispecies thinking across diverse ecological and cultural contexts. Every intensive four or five-day workshop or summer school provides opportunities for advanced undergraduate (Bachelor's) and graduate (Masters/Ph.D.) students, combining seminars, collaborative discussions, and site-based learning.

 

      The educational content in these workshops, symposia or intensive summer schools will depart from the primary concepts and methods developed in Prof. Nathan's forthcoming book and other fundamental Multispecies Studies thought to examine local and global entanglements between humans and other animals, plants, fungi, microorganisms, and material ecosystems. Based on the host institution and partner faculty's interests and needs, different iterations of the Institute can feature a special thematic focus, or may explore the field more broadly. Regardless of its focus, every iteration will explore ecological kinship, multispecies ethics, environmental justice, and more-than-human sentience, agency and culture—while deeply engaging with local environments, experts and other multispecies communities at the host location.

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A Global Community of Multispecies Studies Scholars​

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      By moving between different ecocultural systems of the world, the Multispecies Futures Global Institute will foster transcultural dialogue and transdisciplinary collaboration to locate practies of care and kinship so urgently needed to face complex challenges of our time, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and the transformation of human–nonhuman relationships in the Anthropocene and the Cybercene. Through embodied co-presence and exchanges via collaborative discussions and field trips, the institute seeks to cultivate new approaches to multispecies coexistence, care, and planetary wellbeing.

 

   The Institute also hopes to foster an intimate sustainable network of a global community of scholars invested in exploring the multispecies posthumanities. As more participants complete this experience, the alumni of the institute will be encouraged to become an integral part of this new interconnected global community.