SITUATED ECOLOGIES gathers art, design and research collaborations to contest and democratise ecologies.
Teaching the film ONE TABLE TWO ELEPHANTS
Resources and material to teach the film ONE TABLE TWO ELEPHANTS. Link for free online version, presentations, suggestions for literature and key questions for students to engage with.
Book: Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-Obscene (2019)
The book centres on how to organize anew the articulation between emancipatory theory and political activism in the age of planetary urbanisation. Edited by Henrik Ernstson and Erik Swyngedouw and published by Routledge in 2019.
Teaching: Democratic Practices of Unequal Geographies (PhD Course)
Annual PhD Seminar that reads Political Theory with and against Southern urbanism to help redefine political practice and critical research projects.
Book: Grounding Urban Natures (2019, MIT Press)
This book explores the history and power behind contested urban natures. It won the MIT Press Library Award in 2018 and is published #OpenAccess. Excellent for teaching with well-crafted case studies from Lagos, New Delhi, San Francisco, Berlin, Yixing, Cape Town and more.
Research: Grounding and Worlding Urban Infrastructuers (GROWL)
GROWL develops in-depth case studies and astute mid-level theory of urban infrastructure at the intersection of political ecology and postcolonial urbanism focusing on “petro-urbanism” in Luanda with comparative studies in Nairobi and Kampala.
Film Festival: Crosscut Film & Text Festival
Crosscut Festival for Film & Text in Stockholm is extending the Environmental Humanities.
Cinematic Ethnography: One Table Two Elephants (2018)
A film about ways of knowing urban nature in a postcolonial city — about bushmen boys, a flower kingdom and the ghost of a princess. Filmed in Cape Town.
Research: Ways of Knowing Urban Ecologies (WOK-UE)
This project is now finished and examined social, cultural and political dimensions of urban ecology and natural resource management in Cape Town.
Organising: Situated Urban Political Ecologies (#SUPE)
Situated Urban Political Ecologies (#SituatedUPE) provides a collaborative space for scholars, students, designers and activists to expand UPE with theory & experiences from the Global South.
Design: Tactical Symbiotics & Speculative Design
Focusing on human relations to natural-artificial systems, we explore new terrain for political and ontological thought and praxis.
LATEST NEWS
Teaching the film One Table Two Elephants, a resource for online teaching about postcolonial ecologies and Southern urbanism. Read more
Mineral Extraction in the Age of Green Transformation. Read more
Mineral Extraction in the Age of Green Transformation. Read more
Mineral Extraction in the Age of Green Transformation. Read more
THE LINDEKA: When a City Ate a Book (66 min, 2023, SVA-AAA Toronto) is a cinematic ethnographic film on property, pollution, and difference in the postcolonial city. The is part of our Visual Environmental Humanities project and filmed in eThekwini-Durban. Watch the film’s trailer and read here about teaching with the film.
Read about our project TERRA POTENTIA: The World-Making Force of Dredging.
Dredge boat at work. Photo by Kelly, 2022. Free to use from www.pexels.com.
This website is a platform for research projects and activities related to the study and politics of situated ecologies, in particular those shaped by urbanization. To be situated means to cautiously attend to difference and to take each location and city seriously for what it can bring to theory-making, while keeping broader geographies and dynamics in view. Our research aims to bring forth the many voices, experiences and practices that are re-working urban ecologies and collaborate around theoretical standpoints from where urban ecologies and futures can be understood and engaged.
Random Project
SEE ALL PROJECTS »