What does it mean to live together in a world that is already more-than-human? How might we rethink community, responsibility, and care in ways that include not only other species—animals, plants, microbes—but also technologies, infrastructures, and forms of intelligence that are not our own?

Too often, we rely on stories that separate humans from the rest of the living world—or cast technology solely as a barrier between us and more authentic contact with “nature.” This project asks what happens when we resist that split. How might we learn to see, feel, and think with other species—and with the technologies that bind us together—without pretending we can ever fully step outside a human perspective?

Bringing together researchers from literary studies, philosophy, cultural geography, soft robotics, animal ethics, and cognitive science, Imagining More-than-Human Communities explores how we might cultivate more equitable and attentive ways of living with nonhuman animals, plants, and technologies. We draw inspiration from tentacular, more-than-human thinkers—Donna Haraway, Vinciane Despret, Ed Yong, James Bridle—to ask what forms of curiosity, experiment, and play might help us notice the multispecies communities we already inhabit and imagine new ones.

Team
Kári Driscoll (UU)
K.Driscoll@uu.nl
Project lead

Leon Borgdorf (UU)
Bernice Bovenkerk
(WUR)
Clemens Driessen (WUR)
Irene Kuling (TU/e)
Lucas van Laake (TU/e)
Heidi Lesscher (UU)
Kathrin Thiele (UU)