In conversation with...:co-designing with more-than-human communities

The aim of this project is to explore how an expanded account of community - one which recognises the active participation of non-humans - might contribute to our understandings of how research can be co-designed and co-produced.

It arises from a concern that 'community' has too often been thought of as only including the human, thus leaving out the wide range of interactions with non-humans that sustain and enhance our communities. Likewise, 'research' itself appears most often as an activity that is quintessentially human. However, our research practices have always been entangled with the lives, qualities and capacities of non-human actors. From the birds who demonstrated the vacuum in Robert Boyle's air pump, the dogs who demonstrated the effects of insulin and the genetically modified OncoMouse, much research has relied extensively on the contributions of non-humans. Our interest in this project, then, is to explore how both research and community might be rethought within a 'more-than-human' framework. Literature on the coproduction of research with communities emphasises the benefits of attempting to integrate a wide range of perspectives and experiences, arguing that this makes stronger research that is of more benefit to those the research affects.

However, while there is some evidence that, in the context of climate change and biodiversity loss, proponents of participatory research have begun to recognise a need to extend the paradigm beyond the human communities it has focused on, this has not yet occurred. As a result, this project will initiate an exploration into the possibilities of co-designing research with more-than-human communities. We will do this through staging four 'conversations' with non-human actors and the humans who work with them. We are interested in exploring issues to do with power, voice and agency and so will seek to test the boundaries of 'polite conversation' by working with dogs, bees, trees and water. Reflections on these workshops will be available from our website and we will produce an analysis of the opportunities and challenges of such an approach. We will also produce a peer-reviewed article that will extend the literature on co-production and co-design in this new direction.

This project takes place in a context of mass species extinction, extensive habit loss, climate change, and resource depletion. At its heart is the conviction that, while dominant research paradigms have undoubtedly given rise to remarkable improvements in a range of areas, they have nonetheless failed to address how our changing societies might remain within sustainable limits. One concrete example of the effects of failing to consider more-than-human communities within research is the drastic decline of vultures in East Asia, where over 99% of the population have died from acute reactions to diclofenac, an anti-inflammatory drug given to cattle. Over and above the consequences for the vultures themselves, the increasing amounts of carrion available, (which was previously eaten by the vultures), has led to an exploding feral dog population, which in turn has led to tens of thousands of rabies cases in humans, as well as increases in other diseases. There have also been cultural losses for Zoroastrian communities who have had to find alternative funeral methods. This cascade of effects, which has very real consequences for humans, is partly due to inadequate research methods around drug testing that do not take broader contexts into account.

What this suggests is that the impacts of transforming research practices so that they operate within a paradigm of more-than-human communities are potentially immense. However, shifting conventional research paradigms, many of which remain embedded within Enlightenment philosophies of self-aware humans in a machine-like world, is not a task to be taken at all lightly. Thus while we would like to situate our project within this broader context, we have more modest hopes for our work in this project.

Specific beneficiaries of the research will include the organisations and arts practitioners involved. They are particularly interested in reflecting on how this approach might develop their work in new ways. Their accounts of the benefits of this research will then be disseminated through their wider networks including the British Beekeepers Association and the National Association for Areas of Natural Outstanding Beauty. More widely the novel application of the coproduction paradigm promises to be useful for many working on the intertwining of human and nonhuman communities. For example, these approaches could feed into long standing and acrimonious debates within conservation movements which can pitch local human communities and nonhuman interests in direct opposition to each other. Given the wide range of interests in issues to do with dogs and service work, bees and their current decline, trees and risks to current national forests, and increased risks of flooding and rising sea levels we believe our research will be of further interest to a broad community and so will seek to disseminate the results of our project through a variety of means including through our website but also at events such as the Bristol Festival for Nature, who we are in discussions with at the moment.