About us

THE SITUATED ECOLOGIES PLATFORM gathers art, design and research collaborations to contest and democratise ecologies. The platform celebrates texture, richness, immersive outputs, and multiple theoretical viewpoints to understand ecology and its inherent politics. We contribute to several fields of research and investigation, including human geography, ecology, sociology, post-colonial studies, critical film and design studies, and broadly to the vibrant field of environmental humanities. Based on our commitment to democratic and egalitarian politics, we develop collaborations to pluralize the study of ecology departing from the idea of multiple ways of knowing and being. 

To be situated means to attend to difference and to take each location seriously for what it can bring to theory-making and action, while keeping broader geographies and dynamics in view. It also means to attend to knowledge politics and the origins of theory, how theory has traveled and how it has been embodied in different subject-positions. It means to attend to from where we speak when we theorize a particular place, a city, the environment, people and nonhumans. Our research aims to bring forth the many voices, experiences and practices that are re-working contested ecologies and launch fresh, engaged, and radical ways to forge more egalitarian future ecologies.

We publish articles and books, but also film, theatre, and design to redefine the study of contested ecologies. With an extensive network of colleagues and co-workers, we have organised workshops, conferences, courses, meetings and festivals, including but not limited to: Wangui Kimari, Ashley Bohrer, Andrés Henao Castro, Anita Mkizwana, Philisiwe Twinjstra, Jia-Ching Chen, Ricardo Cardoso, Jonathan Silver, Mary Lawhon, Ismael Farouk, Tau Tavengwa, Densen Magaisa, Nitin Bathla, Klearjos Papanicolau, Jane Battersby, Andrew Charman, Stefan Benting, Leeroy Philips, Gill Black, Shuaib Lwasa, Erik Swyngedouw, Emile Jansen, Kelvin Cochrane, Madina Tlostanova, Oddveig Nicole Sarmiento, Sverker Sörlin, Felipe Irarrázaval, Gianfranco Selgas, Adam Wickberg, Martín Arboleda and more. (Here you find a brief sketch of our history and background.)

Co-directors: 

• Henrik Ernstson, Co-director & Founder, Professor in Urban Sustainable Development and Docent in Political Ecology at the Environmental Science Department at KTH (aka SEED), KTH R!oyal Institute of Technology, Honorary Senior Research Scholar in Human Geography, The University of Manchester (2023-2026), Honorary Associate Professor, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town (2018-2023).
• Jacob von Heland, Co-director & Founder, years of research and former principal investigator at the KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory.
• Joshua Lewis, Co-director, Research Professor at ByWater Institute, Tulane University, Louisiana.
• Gianfranco Selgas, Co-director, Researcher at the Environmental Science Department at KTH (aka SEED) 

This pages updated in September 2026. /HE