Community members

Asya Ilgün (PhD) is an architectural researcher and designer exploring how bringing life sciences and crafts-based practices together can shape more-than-human architectures. She is currently based in Graz, Austria and a post-doc member of the research group Artificial Life lab at the Institute of Biology, University of Graz. Her work bridges technology, ecology, and craft. She loves bees, fungi, 3D printing and weaving different materials, people and disciplines together. 

Svenja (PhD) explores more-than-human and multisensory perspectives in design, combining artistic research, ecology, and technology to develop inclusive, material-driven approaches for regenerative futures and alternative learning environments. She loves to weave connections to people, materials, and techniques far beyond textiles. Part of and besides her position as Senior Lecturer at the Swedish School of Textiles at the University of Borås, she is co-founder of Insect Worldings, board member of the Design & Posthumanism Network, leader of the WeB research project, VIBRA network coordinator, and director of artistic research at Innovus Research Institute.

My name is Katka Katerina Cerna and I am a researcher, educator and a designer, working at Halmstad University, Sweden. I use design ethnographic and participatory approaches to explore how to develop novel ways of knowing and learning to care for the world in a more sustainable way. More specifically, I work with projects integrating knowledge on social and environmental sustainability with more-than-human perspectives on design.

Colleen Ludwig is an artist, educator, environmentalist and activist. Her installations, performances and live experiences engage an expanded range of senses. Her research has focused on the living world, co-creating with mycelium, fungi, insects and soil to address biodiversity loss and environmental justice. The work is multi-faceted, site-specific and transpires in overlapping circles of collaboration with community and research partners, such as the international I.N.S.E.C.T. Community, the Eastside Community Network, and the Michigan Climate Action Network. 

She taught electronic media, interdisciplinary and participatory arts at universities across the Midwest (U.S.) for 20 years.

Felix Carros is a socioinformatics researcher and founder of a forest-focused NGO. He began his career working on social robotics and has since redirected his research toward forestry and species conservation practices. His work centers on developing digital solutions through participatory design and ethnographic methods, collaborating closely with those who manage ecosystems. He seeks to extend socio-technical design beyond a strictly human-centered perspective by recognizing ecosystems and non-human actors as relevant stakeholders. His research maintains that technology should support a holistic understanding of ecological systems, as neglecting their interdependencies can lead to unintended and often initially unseen long-term consequences.

Anneke ter Schure is an Amsterdam based biologist, water quality researcher and artist. She uses biological data, concepts, research methods and techniques and enjoys working with living organisms and materials. 

Anneke is driven by the question: 'how can we humans explore, understand, communicate and question our inherent entanglement with the living and non-living that surround us and are part of us?', and is particularly excited about uncovering the unseen and unheard natural world.

Lucy (she/her) is a practice-based PhD student at the Living Systems Lab, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. She collaborates across disciplines (art/ecology/philosophy) and species (bryophyte/human) to co-create more-than-human knowledges. Her research focuses on 'Mossibilities', learning with moss knowledge through transdisciplinary collaborative art practice, in particular drawing as a multispecies way of knowing, to challenge systems of extractivism and reimagine reciprocal and regenerative ways of being. 

Hi, I am Roland and feel very passionate about insects and spiders, mainly animals that many people do not really like. Even before I could speak properly I was fascinated with spiders. Today I am a specialist on leafhoppers, vibrational communication and biodiversity conservation in Germany. Collaborating with artists and sharing my knowledge about insects is what I enjoy very much.

"Once you begin watching spiders, you haven’t time for much else." (E.B.White, 1899-1985)

What happens when we design for more than consumption? I think I am experiencing tension between creating designs that invite broad participation but also communicate complex ideas about material agency and technological transparency. I'm also working on resolving the challenges of scaling up individual design interventions to community-based efforts. One thing that drives my work is the need to resist capitalist, commodity-riddled impluses that trap consumers in a cycle of consumerism instead of liberating us into more-than-human relationships.

At home I am a caregiver of 12 inside plants, 1 garden, 3 humans and one pup. I enjoy making through laser cutting, 3D printing, and handcraft. My academic career is rooted at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, US, where I am a PhD student in Human-Centered Design & Engineering.

Dr. Kuai Shen is an artist who amplifies ant worlds and invertebrate kinships guided by earthly attunements with more-than-human ecologies and indigenous ontologies. His practice-led research employs technology-based performances, decolonial tactics, and multisensory imperatives to overturn conventional representations of insects by dominant research imaginaries.

Kuai’s transversal work has been published in journals such as Society and Animals, Antennae, Art&Australia, Humans and Nature, and in the book Distributed Perception. His artworks have been commissioned by Eli Broad Museum, FACT Liverpool, National Art Gallery Vilnius, House of Arts Brno, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Quito, and Copernicus Centre in Warsaw. Kuai has been awarded stipends and prizes, such as Musikfonds Germany, Bridge from Michigan State University, the Saxony Cynetart Award, the Edith-Russ-Haus Media Prize, and an honorary mention at Prix Ars Electronica.

Anton Poikolainen Rosén is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden. He studies design for sustainable futures, the more-than-human world, and technologies that are better attuned to ecological entanglements and our experiences of them. He is co-editor of the Interactions Magazine forum More-than-Human design in Practice. Reach out to pitch your article idea!  

Tincuta Heinzel is an artist, designer, and curator, Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University (UK), whose work explores how old and new materials shape—and reveal—the structures of everyday life and those of our environment, as well as the logics of industrial and post-industrial practices. She obtained her PhD from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (France) with a thesis examining how electronic textiles transform the ways we conceive, design, use, and discard textile materials. Her research operates at the intersection between design theory, design philosophy, aesthetics, and systemic thinking. Her texts have been published in journals including Design Issues, Leonardo, Art Nodes, Journal of Textiles Design Research and Practice. She convened the Textile Intersections conference in 2019 and 2023, and has curated exhibitions such as Haptosonics (Oslo, 2013), Repertories of (in)discretion (Budapest; Bucharest, 2015) and Attempts, Failures, Trials, and Errors (Bergen; Bucharest, 2017–2018). She is since 2022 an elected member of the IAS of Design Research Society.

I am a PhD candidate in Management, Production, and Design at Politecnico di Torino, Italy, where my work navigates the intersection of systemic design, post-humanist ethics, and regenerative bioeconomy.

My research focuses on the Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens), moving beyond its role as a mere industrial resource to recognize it as a legitimate stakeholder in our socio-technical systems. Adopting a more-than-human perspective as both an ethical stance and a methodological framework, I explore how insects can be meaningfully involved in co-design processes.

To bridge the gap between abstract philosophy and industrial practice, I employ a "methodological bricolage" of multispecies storytelling, collaborative autoethnography, and embodied practices. I see the technological apparatus of the insect biorefinery not just as a tool for extraction, but as a philosophical and relational device—a field of operation to renegotiate the relationships between humans and non-humans.

I am driven by the challenge of dismantling anthropocentric biases in innovation. My work calls for a fundamental rethinking of value creation, investigating how we can scale insect farming—up, out, and deep—without erasing local specificities or losing sight of multispecies justice. Ultimately, my research seeks to design business models where technical innovation and ethical commitment evolve in tandem, fostering alternative futures rooted in cohabitation and care.

Omi-peah Ryding is an artist, a researcher and an experience designer based in Copenhagen. She has a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction, and in her research, she has focused on how to design for ‘affective critical play’ – play which allows for an exploration of power, intimacy, and connection in encounters with the more-than-human world. She is inspired by biomimicry and shamanic practices on how to co-create with life. This includes playful and performative practices of deep listening, embodiment and flowing with the moment.

Anne-Kathrin Kühner is an independent design researcher and artist working at the intersection of textile construction, material systems, and architecture. She frames her work under the title Solidified Textiles, investigating how textile logics can generate form, structure, and stability when combined with solidifying materials. A current focus of her research is mycelium-based filament hybrids, which she develops into scaled, solidified textiles through iterative prototyping, cultivation processes, and material testing. She understands textile construction as a spatial system: flexible in its initial state, structure-forming in the process of growth and drying. She’s deeply interested in natural and regional materials and techniques, which she explores with great curiosity and integrates into her design projects.

Kristine Diekman is a media artist and educator working in responsive media, sound, drawing, documentary and experimental film, and social practice art. Collaborating with scientists and other artists, she co-creates multi-sensory installations that activate tactility, haptics and deep listening as strategies to enhance intersubjective experiences. 

I am Maria Rosaria, an Italian ethologist and science communicator. My work explores how living beings interact with their environment, with a particular focus on behaviour as a bridge between organisms and the ecosystems they inhabit.

I worked as a researcher at the University of Turin, where I investigated acoustic interactions between pollinators and plants. My research focused on insect wingbeat sounds, analysing their production, the acoustic traits that signal species identity, and their ecological relevance as sources of information for other organisms. 

Alongside research, I am deeply engaged in science communication. I currently work in schools, designing interactive workshops that use experiments to explore natural phenomena and the scientific method.

My long-term goal is to develop interdisciplinary communication projects that combine scientific knowledge with embodied experiences to foster deeper ecological awareness.

I used to spend my whole childhood in nature. We used to live on a 10,000 sqm piece of land and I loved to really KNOW this place. To know where the first spring flowers bloom, where you can enjoy the last rays of sunshine, where you find a cool spot on a hot summer day under a tree. I had so many encounters with all kind of creatures during my childhood and I would love to design spaces where both people and other forms of life can coexist, but also have their own spaces. I hold a deep love for every living being and I would love to learn to design spaces that allow people to form a similar connection to them as I did as a kid. I can knit, sew, spin fibers or dye fabric. Also, I'm a whitewater kayaker and river activist.

Alexandra Samandar is a designer working with interactive media and experimental video art. She combines analog and digital techniques, including screen printing and projection mapping, often experimenting with hybrid forms between craft and technology. Co-founder of the cultural space Kollektiv Kaorle and the community garden collective Alsergarten in Vienna.

Femke Krijger is a holistic therapist/trainer, international researcher on bodily tactile senses & haptic technology and inspirational speaker. Combining lived experience with progressive loss of sight and hearing and theoretical knowledge she offers insights from another, more uncommon perceptual perspective. 

Alena (she/her) is an artist and experience designer working with ecosomatic and multisensory practices that explore relationships between bodies, land, and more-than-human worlds from a queer and poetic lens. She creates experiences that unfold non-linearly, working with expanded choreographies, ritual structures, and site-specific engagement to investigate how we sense our entanglement with the living world.

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Her recent work Mushroom Memories is a multisensory installation for elderly people in care homes, designed for people of all abilities. Centered around a 100-year-old birch root, it combines responsive sound, vibrations, forest scents, and augmented reality to transform institutional spaces into sites of wonder. Presented across five care home locations, it reached nearly four hundred residents.

Divination for the Apocalypse, shown at Stockholm Fringe 2025, is a durational participatory work exploring our relationship to the apocalypse through somatic practice, water ritual, and collective exchange. Drawing from hydrofeminism and divination, part of the ritual extends into participants' homes over several days through vessels they take with them.

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Alena's practice treats art as a site of disobedient care and ecological attunement.

I am a Danish author and strategist working at the intersection of biodiversity, human transformation, and more-than-human design. My work explores how ecological knowledge, multispecies ethics, and land-based practices can push systemic transformation. I am a co-founder of Biomagine, a community supporting farmers in transitioning toward regenerative agriecology. Through field-based learning, peer networks, and farmled development projects, Biomagine works to strengthen soil health, biodiversity, and large scale rural resilience. Our work focus on mindscapes and management strategies among farmers and the systems they live and work within. I am also founder of Futurista, a studio focused on regenerative transition among decision makers. I hold a PhD in regenerative transformation and ideas of biodiversity, and my work often bridge research and practice. I have a huge passion for making complex stuff easy to handle, and for engaging people into regenerative practices grounded in care, reciprocity, and long-term planetary stewardship.

My name is Lino Gualinga, and I belong to the Kichwa Indigenous People of Sarayaku, located in the province of Pastaza, Ecuador. I live in the community of Sarayakillo, where I am actively committed to my culture and the defence of our territory. I am an active member of the Sarayaku people and currently hold two positions in the TAYJASARUTA organisation. Likwati, which is the traditional security role within the community. Vice-president of SAMARUTA, the youth council, where we work to strengthen the leadership, identity and vision of the people. Outside the governing council, I carry out traditional activities that are fundamental to our community life, such as hunting and fishing, which guarantee food for the family. I also practise our ancestral culture through the making of baskets, shikras, canoes and other traditional crafts. I maintain a chakra – our form of sustainable agriculture – where I grow cassava, plantains, papachina and other foods essential for our family's survival and balance with nature.

Katty Gualinga is the current youth leader of the Kichwa indigenous community of Sarayaku, located on the banks of the Bobonaza River in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She participated in the I.N.S.E.C.T. 2025 summer camp, where she shared her community’s worldview and learned about academic approaches to worldviews beyond the human.

Patricia Csobánczi is a researcher and designer with a deep interest in participatory and more-than-human design approaches to explore issues of sustainable transition. Currently working at the Service Design Lab in Aalborg University, Denmark, I collaborate with cities and communities to explore design's role in shaping sustainable urban futures. A growing interest in multispecies thinking and how governance can move beyond anthropocentrism to recognise the agency of non-human systems strongly shapes her research.She also co-founded Hopkok Fabrik, a design collective creating experiences for children around food culture, and sustainability across the Nordics.

I'm a PhD student in law from Helsinki, on a journey to understand how to design legal systems that better sustain the conditions for (bio)diversity, life, and ecological justice. A big "Aha!" moment for me was realizing that law just needs to take seriously the fact that everything is connected.

I love the fancy tansy beetles. Whenever I see one I feel happy. I'm also passionate about composting and veggie gardening - they also provide a way to build a personal relationship with insects! Our backyard compost in Atlanta was a little dynamic communion all year round. Now that I live in Finland, it takes a bit more effort to keep it buzzing through the freezing winters. I'm dreaming of building a self-sustaining house in the middle of the woods.

My current interests are working and living in reciprocity and relationships with the natural worlds and beyond. Incorporating cyclical nature into daily, monthly, yearly practice, living more along the natural cycles. Slowing down. Exploring the wisdom of both Earth and Cosmos and fostering these relationships. Especially the aspects of woman's cyclical bodies and connection to Moon/cosmos is much alive in me at the moment. I would love to live in a world, where these relationships and ways of living were honored and easier to live by. To keep myself connected and present, I spend a lot of time with nature - and in motion. Practices that connects and mobilize me both with the whole, and with my internal state. I practice both focused attention and respons-ability, as well as pleasure and play time. This I take with me into cooking, where I love to incorporate wild foods and herbs, and be inspired by the natural environment and seasons. Currently into wild fermented drinks! I am here to keep your bellies fed and smiles on your faces - so you have energy to create. My intention is also, that the eating will be a sacred place for connection with the different layers and elements. As within, so without :-)

Sofia Fernández is a german-uruguayan Product Designer and Researcher with a focus on digital and sustainable materials combining both in her bio-digital crafts. Currently she does her PhD on fungal mycelium materials & digital fabrication at Bauhaus-university Weimar (Junior-Prof. Pearce, Prof. Willmann) and works as a research associate in the department of product design at Weißensee Kunsthoschule Berlin where she teaches digital tools and workflows after working for several years at the University of Applied Sciences, Berlin. Besides her academic work, Sofia follows her independent design projects from her studio in Berlin-Schöneweide, which merges with her own design-label for sustainable digital furniture called „soft matter“.

I am a sound artist and researcher from the UK, and have been based in Berlin for the last 9 years. I use sound as a tool of artistic inquiry to explore ecological spaces, and to sound out the messy and noisy ways in which human activity is embedded within these spaces. In my most recent projects I have been using microphones to record soil sounds and integrate them into sound installations. I am excited to learn about insect vibration and relational networks from a variety of different artistic and research perspectives, as well as exploring a new ecosystem together with our daughter Alma.

My design research approach relies on searching for novel definitions of design since its belongings extend beyond space and time. I see this beyond human capacity and agency which positions my research around this entangled nature where relational agencies cause the unstability of forms. Therefore, on the practical side, I am interested in expressing those agencies through movement, embodiment and mapping.

​How can designers genuinely engage with non-human perspectives without falling into anthropocentric projections? I’m exploring how embodied movement and sensory disruption can shift designers’ perception and open space for more-than-human attunement. A key struggle I face is the lack of embodied methodologies in traditional design education and practice—especially in fields like architecture, urban planning, and interaction design, where physical and sensory experience is often sidelined. I’m also responding to the urgency of rethinking design’s role within ecological collapse. Rather than designing for sustainability in abstract terms, I aim to explore what it means to design with other species and environments through shared presence, improvisation, and sensory alignment.

Hi! I'm Hasti — a designer exploring the edges of architecture, robotics, and material practice. My work focuses on robotic additive manufacturing with bio-based materials, investigating how we can collaborate with matter and more-than-human agents.
I’ve co-taught at ESA in Paris, led hands-on fabrication workshops in Tehran, and co-curated exhibitions on digital making and robotics — most recently at the Tehran Biennale.
I’m drawn to the serendipity of messy prototypes, the quiet logic of machines, and materials that have a life of their own. Let’s create something strange and alive.

I am an artist and film maker from the UK, and am developing a new experimental documentary about human relationships with the more-than-human world. Svenja and Asya have kindly let me join the summer camp to document the emergent happenings which is very exciting and I am looking forward to meeting everyone. Im interested in the convergence of science and art to communicate themes such as plant and fungi intelligence, animal sentience and communication, and evolutionary cognition.

My interest in plant intelligence manifested while making the feature documentary ‘The Creeping Garden’ - a film about plasmodial slime moulds, although since I was a child I have always felt ill at ease with the behaviourist attitude to non-human organisms. I have subsequently been searching for more holistic and less anthropocentric ways of understanding the natural world and its symbiotic complexity.

I am a terrestrial artist and creative technologist. I grew up in a city threaded with rivers. The river shapes part of me, it flows through me like it flows through the land; part of me is the river, it carries me to the places I’ve never been. I like to create poetic encounters, my practice engages new media forms, such as websites, sound projects, interactive installations to explore our perception with the earth including organisms and inorganic copartners. I like floating on the river, tasting salt, and chasing sunsets. 

I am a designer passionate about the science of colour, from exploring natural plant dyes, to bacterial dyes to structural colours in nature. I love to explore biomaterials and have experience growing Kombucha leather as well as 3D printing alginate structures as a habitat for microorganisms. When I’m not working, you’ll find me out hiking, photographing birds and insects and learning new languages.

Stine (she/they) is an interdisciplinary designer working in the intersection between architecture, spatial design, urban design and planning. With a focus on place-based sensitivities, local resources, and multi-species entanglements, they explore how humans can take a regenerative role in coexisting with everything alive. They run the spatial design practice, Earth Erotica, and work for an urban design NGO, Dreamtown.