about us
the multispecies lab at The New School is a cross-disciplinary initiative that explores design and research through a more-than-human lens. We recognize that every human action shapes the ecosystems we share, and we center care for species and environments that are often marginalized or overlooked.
our goal is to support and connect students, faculty, and collaborators working with multispecies thinking, ecological empathy, and ethical design. We aim to make existing work visible and accessible through a growing network, public events, and a living digital archive.
this Fall, we are launching a “show-and-tell” gathering to bring together projects across the university and begin forming a broader community. Future events and calls for participation will be shared here as the network grows.
the multispecies lab is a space for collaboration, critical inquiry, and new ways of imagining shared futures for human and more-than-human: multispecies futures.
the collective
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Parsons School of Design
Fiona Raby is University Professor of Design and Social Inquiry at The New School, Co-Director of the Designed Realities Lab, and a GIDEST Fellow. Between 2011-2015 she was professor of Industrial Design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. She has taught Architecture (ads04), Computer Related Design and Design Interactions since 1995. Between 2011-2015 she was Reader in Design Interactions at the Royal College of Art in London. She is also a partner in the design studio Dunne & Raby.
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School of Constructive Environments
Eva Perez de Vega is an architect, designer and educator. She is founding partner at e+i studio, an architecture and design firm based in NYC focusing on projects that engage the public balancing social and environmental parameters with aesthetic innovation and ecological empathy. Prior to establishing e+i studio, Eva was a design architect at Reiser+Umemoto.
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School of Constructive Environments
Christine is a designer, maker and founder of ‘Modest’ (www.thisismodest.org) - a design and education entity that promotes a regenerative design model that connects makers in the US to maker communities in tropical forest communities. The aim is to support the diversification of managed reforested systems through the cultivation and application of plant-based materials in design application - supporting alternative economic opportunities to ranching, the leading cause of deforestation in the Americas. Modest’s work is done in partnership with on-ground non-profits, communities, professional makers and design students.
https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/faculty/christine-facella/
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The New School for Social Research
Dominic Pettman is University Professor of Media and New Humanities and Chair of the Program in Liberal Studies at The New School for Social Research. He has held previous positions at the University of Melbourne, the University of Geneva, the University of Amsterdam, and the American University of Paris. His courses explore posthumanism, critical theory, Continental Philosophy, cultural studies, digital culture, animal studies, sound studies, new media, environmental humanities, and affect theory.
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The New School for Social Research
For me, history of philosophy and a critical theory of society are two sides of the same coin: our interest for the past always reflects the standpoint of the present, but one cannot understand the present without navigating our past. I see philosophy as a critical tool in a constant dialogue with other disciplines, according to an interdisciplary model of critique that goes back to the Frankfurt School.
Besides English, my work has also appeared in Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Greek, Hebrew, Turkish, Bulgarian, Romanian, Slovak and Catalan. Since 2001, I have given 130 lectures across five continents, including venues such as Stanford University, University of Chicago, University of Toronto, Vilnius, Barcelona, Ljubljana, Rosario Argentina, Harvard University, Calarts, University College London, Berlin, EHESS in Paris, Universitade Federal de Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo (USP), Yale University, CUNY, Sydney University, Columbia University, and Princeton University, among others.
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Parsons School of Design
Gökhan Kodalak is an architect, instructing architecture and design studios at Parsons School of Design; a theorist, teaching philosophies of architecture, nature, and cities at Pratt Institute; and an architectural historian holding a Ph.D. from and teaching specialized seminars at Cornell University. His work explores architectural ontology and cybernetic epistemology, design ecology and nature-architecture continuum, spatial politics and urban commons, affective aesthetics and immanent ethics, and the heterodox Spinozist conception that architectural modalities are alive [animata].
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Parsons School of Design
Christopher Kennedy is Associate Director at the Urban Systems Lab and a lecturer at Parsons. His work focuses on urban ecology, multispecies thinking, and community-driven environmental stewardship.
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Parsons School of Design
Oliver Kellhammer is an artist, activist, writer, and researcher who seeks to demonstrate nature’s surprising ability to recover from damage. Recent work has included developing new biomaterials protocols, researching the psychosocial effects of climate change, planting prehistorically native trees on landscapes impacted by industrial logging, and cataloging the biodiversity of brownfields. He is currently a part-time assistant professor in Sustainable Systems at Parsons in NYC.
contact: kellhamo[at]newschool.edu | twitter =>okellhammer | archive: www.oliverk.org
https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/faculty/oliver-kellhammer/
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Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts
Heather Davis is Associate Professor and Director of Culture and Media at Eugene Lang College, The New School. As an interdisciplinary scholar working in environmental humanities, media studies, and visual culture, she is interested in how the saturation of fossil fuels has shaped contemporary culture. Her most recent book, Plastic Matter (Duke University Press, 2022) won the ALECC Alanna Bondar Literary Prize in 2024. Plastic Matter argues that plastic has transformed the world because of its incredible longevity and range, as it has also transformed our understandings and expectations of matter and materiality. She is the co-editor of Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters Among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies (Open Humanities Press, 2015), and editor of the award-winning Desire Change: Contemporary Feminist Art in Canada (MAWA and McGill Queen’s UP, 2017). Her work has been supported by numerous grants and fellowships including the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Center for Environmental Futures at the University of Oregon, and the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Davis is an active member of the Synthetic Collective, an interdisciplinary team of scientists, humanities scholars, and artists, who investigate and make visible plastic pollution in the Great Lakes. https://heathermdavis.com/bio-cv/
https://www.newschool.edu/lang/faculty/heather-davis/
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Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts
I am a philosopher, cultural theorist, and curator of visual and sonic art. An interest in contemporary art led me to 19th through 21st century European philosophy, which I have taught and written about for many years along with wider topics in metaphysics, epistemology, and social and political philosophy. Since the mid-1990s, I have written on music and art for magazines such as Artforum and The Wire, and have curated exhibitions at The Kitchen, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, The Artists Institute, and other venues. I am editor-at-large at Cabinet magazine and received an Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation. I teach courses on power, posthumanism, audio culture, sound art, photography, relativism and realism, philosophy as a way of life, and many other topics in contemporary thought and culture.
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Parsons School of Design
Andrea Macruz is a Brazilian designer who holds a Master's in Bio-Digital Architecture, Interior Design and Furniture Design from institutes in Barcelona, Sao Paulo and Milan. Currently, she is part of the DigitalFUTURES PhD program at Tongji University in Shanghai. Her work has been published in magazines like Domus, Wallpaper and Vogue, and showcased at Salone Satellite, the Architecture Beijing Biennale, Rossana Orlandi's exhibits in Milan, Hong Kong, and Doha, as well as the London, Barcelona, and Berlin Design Weeks. Andrea has taught at several institutes worldwide.
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The New School for Social Research
Alice Crary is University Distinguished Professor (Philosophy, Liberal Studies and Gender & Sexuality Studies) and also Visiting Fellow at Regent's Park College, University of Oxford. She was Chair of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research (2014-2017) and Founding Co-Director of the Graduate Certificate in Gender and Sexuality Studies (2014-2017).
A moral and social philosopher, Crary has written widely on issues in metaethics, moral psychology and normative ethics, philosophy and literature, philosophy and feminism, critical animal studies, critical environmental studies, critical disability studies, and Critical Theory as well as on figures such as Austin, Cavell, Diamond, Foot, Murdoch and Wittgenstein. Her most recent book (co-authored with Lori Gruen) Animal Crisis: A New Critical Theory(Polity, 2022) argues for a radical reimagining of our relationship with animals via seven case studies of complex human-animal relations. Pioneering primatologist Dr. Jane Goodall commented that the work "presents the reader with the most thorough research into the ways in which animal lives are understood."
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The New School of Social Research
Pursuing a greater understanding of the relationship between monarch butterflies and the people and communities they interact with has carried Dr. Columba Gonzalez-Duarte far, connecting her roots in Mexico to Toronto and to her new home in New York City. Through her research, Columba examines the conservation dynamics of the monarch butterfly across three nations, analyzing the connections between NAFTA's agri-food industry, labor migration, and the decline of the monarch population. She also collaborates with scientific and Indigenous communities in Canada, the United States, and Mexico to document their knowledge and ways of relating to migratory insects. Dr. Gonzalez-Duarte's academic practice is shaped by feminist ethics of care, promoting a different form of justice that values the well-being of both humans and more-than-humans during their migratory journeys across North America.
https://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/columba-gonzález-duarte/
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Parsons School of Design
Laura Nova is an artist, educator, and activist who lives and works on New York’s Lower East Side, creating festive, absurdist spectacles that unite generations and diverse communities. The first Public Artist in Residence to be embedded in New York City’s Department for the Aging, Nova brings expertise and empathy to her projects and actions, designing each element to enhance social wellness and decrease social isolation. Working in festivals, public monuments, and the city street, Nova delivers stories to homebound New Yorkers, organizes an older adult cheerleading squad and designs crafting kits, guides and costumes that help nurture emerging activists of all ages. She is a fellow at the Urban Design Forum, advocating for the creation of a Commissioner of Caring.
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The New School for Social Research
Nicholas Langlitz is an anthropologist and historian of science whose work bridges philosophy, the life sciences, and social inquiry. He explores how humans—ever-evolving and unsettled—are studied across medicine, biology, and behavior, with a focus on interdisciplinary approaches that connect the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences.
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Parsons School of Design
Radhika Subramaniam has an interdisciplinary practice as curator and writer exploring the poetics and politics of crises and surprises as they emerge in walking, art, urban life and human-nonhuman relationships. She was the first Director/Chief Curator of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center (SJDC) at The New School from 2009-2017 and is currently Associate Professor of Visual Culture in the School of Art and Design History and Theory at Parsons School of Design. Previously Director of Cultural Programs at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, she was founding executive editor of an interdisciplinary journal, Connect: Art. Politics. Theory. Practice. She is presently working on a book on a medieval elephant embassy.https://www.newschool.edu/parsons/faculty/radhika-subramaniam/
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The New School for Social Research
Dana Burton is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Design at The New School for Social Research.
She is an anthropologist who sits at the intersection of the anthropology of outer space, feminist science and technology studies, and multispecies studies. Diving into the world of astrobiology, Dana followed scientists from the Atacama Desert, Chile to NASA centers around the US, to (models of) planetary bodies across the solar system to explore the efforts to comprehend and materialize life beyond Earth. Burton teaches classes on anthropology and design, sensory-based methods, and the critical and creative potential of the planetary. She is also engaged in artistic practices and draws on her background in dance, painting, mixed-media, and poetry across her research and teaching endeavors.
https://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/dana-burton/
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Parsons School of Design
Harpreet is an Assistant Professor of Interaction and Media Design at Parsons School of Design. His research is situated at the intersection of Material Science, Biology, and Electronics, drawing on the complementary abilities of the biological and artificial worlds. He terms this as 'Convergent Design' and creates cutting-edge bionic materials and hybrid substrates that lend themselves to future ecological machinery, sensing systems, and interaction design. Harpreet earned a graduate degree in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab and has previously lived and worked in Austria, India, Japan, Paris, Singapore, and the USA. He is currently an Honorary Fellow at the Berggruen Institute (Los Angeles) and an INK Fellow (India), collaborating with intellectuals across cultural and political boundaries.
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The New School of Social Research
My research bridges Africana, continental, decolonial, environmental, and feminist philosophy to foreground issues of racism and colonialism for environmental ethics and justice. Specifically, my work is oriented by eco-philosophies that trouble theories of justice inherited from liberal political philosophy, and by ontological politics and practices of freedom operative in racial ecologies, place-based movements, and struggles over land. My research also contributes to continental philosophy and critical theory by examining how Africana and decolonial philosophy repurpose aspects of the former traditions for their own ends.
https://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty/rafi-youatt/
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Parsons School of Design
Lisa Schonberg is a composer, percussionist, and ecological sound artist. Informed by her background in ecology, Schonberg composes music with a focus on cryptic sounds of insects and other underappreciated beyond-humans. She documents soundscapes, insects, and habitat through music composition, writing, and multimedia collaboration, engaging the public in listening to prompt heightened consideration of these soundworlds. Currently she is developing music composition systems that interact with insect sound in real time. Her recent work includes research on ant bioacoustics with entomologists in the Brazilian Amazon, cryptic sound studies with landscape architects in Oregon, detection of cellular frequencies in ant habitats in NY, and music composition concerning Pacific Northwest old-growth forests, Hawaiian endangered bees, fungi, and plastics. Schonberg's compositions are performed by Secret Drum Band, UAU, Antenna, & solo. https://lisaschonberg.cargo.site