Presentations, programs, and news from the Smart Forests community.
08/05/2026
As part of this PUC-Rio colloquium on Digital Humanities and the “glitch,” Jennifer Gabrys will give a keynote on Smart Forests research. Her talk will show work that investigates fire technologies and community engagement, including the Ecologies of Fire / Ecologías del Fuego collaboration and collection.
05/05/2026
With accelerating climate change, increasingly unsustainable land use, and clashes at wildland-urban interfaces, fires are becoming more frequent, intense, and destructive. In these shifting fire regimes, the new Smart Forests open-access collection, Ecologies of Fire / Ecologías del Fuego, explores how communities, researchers, artists, and Indigenous peoples are collectively rethinking their relationships with fire.
05/06/2025
Jennifer Gabrys presents work from the Planetary Praxis research group and Smart Forests project as part of this “Social and Political Sciences at Two Degrees” event at the University of Glasgow as part of the “Future Directions” series.
23/05/2025
Jennifer Gabrys participated in the MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) lunchtime conversation - Human-AI Co-creation. Discussants considered the implications of different AI technologies across domains including health, environment, social media, labour, and critical infrastructures.
22/05/2025
Phoebe Hamilton Jones and Jennifer Gabrys hosted a Smart Forests Knowledge Exchange Workshop at Cambridge Cottage, Kew Gardens, to discuss findings from the Community-led Forest Technologies interim report, and to foster dialogue among stakeholders in government, industry, community groups, and aligned fields. The event was made possible with funding from the ERC as part of the Smart Forests project; and from the Social Science Impact Fund, Research Strategy Office, University of Cambridge.
06/05/2025
The Smart Forests project is featured in the research stories by AHSS Research Funding and Strategic Initiatives, University of Cambridge. The feature highlights our key findings and proposals to inform policymaking.
12/03/2025
Jennifer Gabrys will give a presentation on a recent Smart Forests case study in Chile for the “Situating Architecture” lecture series at The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London (12 March 2025).
18/02/2025
The Community-led Forest Technologies interim report documents and analyzes the social and political impacts of digital technologies on forest communities across the globe. Drawing on four case studies and a survey of smart forest initatives, the report reveals how these technologies can reshape environmental governance and influence how communities perceive and inhabit forest worlds. The report concludes with proposals on how these technologies can help create more just and thriving forest worlds.
31/01/2025
Jennifer Gabrys will give a keynote presentation as part of the “Meet the Editors”: Big Data & Society workshop, organized by the ERC-funded DATAUNION project, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium (30-31 January 2025).
15/01/2025
The Smart Forests project film documents ongoing research into the increasing digitalization of forest environments. Developed as part of the ERC-funded Smart Forests project, the film shows how the rise of digital technologies for forest monitoring and governance can differently enable or constrain forest-dependent communities in locations worldwide. Covering research undertaken from 2020 onwards, it focuses on four in-depth case studies in Chile, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and India.
19/11/2024
Jennifer Gabrys gives the keynote presentation, “Sensing Air, Fire, Water, Earth: How to Build Habitable Worlds with Citizen Technoscience,” for the launch of the CITEC Nucleo Milenio on citizen technoscience in Santiago, Chile.
04/10/2024
Jennifer Gabrys will deliver a keynote, “Composing Planetary Health in a World on Fire,” for the “Imagining Planetary Health, Well-Being, and Habitability” workshop at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. The event will explore the how the planetary and planetarities intersect with changing notions of health and liveable worlds.
18/07/2024
As part of the EASST/4S 2024 conference on Science, Technology & Society studies, taking place in Amsterdam from 16-19 July 2024, postdoc Yuti Fatimah will present a paper, “Unravelling the Complexities of Counterfactual World-Making in Carbon Offset Projects: A Case Study of Rimba Raya” co-authored with Jennifer Gabrys. This talk will be part of a panel on “Politics of Carbon Sinks. Knowledge, Institutions, and Shifting Understandings of the Environment.”
16/07/2024
From 16-19 July 2024, postdoc Michelle Westerlaken will attend the EASST/4S conference in Amsterdam (NL) with a presentation titled “Simulating Biodiversity: The Digital Logics of Emerging Environmental Monitoring Technologies”. This talk will be part of a panel on “the improbable coalition of the “twin” green and digital transitions”.
25/06/2024
Jennifer Gabrys will deliver a keynote, “AI x Digital Environmental Justice,” for the Digital x Climate Summer Institute at the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. The event will explore the multiple intersections of digital technologies and climate topics, including the environmental impact of digital devices.
11/06/2024
On 12 June 2024, Smart Forests postdoc Yuti Fatimah will discuss the multiplicity of carbon practices in her presentation, “Noticing the Forest: The Multiplicity of Conservation Practices in Bungo, Jambi (Indonesia),” at the Challenge of Conservation conference organized by the University of Cambridge.
27/04/2024
As part of the Preemptive Listening three-day event at the Tate Modern in London, Jennifer Gabrys presents work from the Smart Forests project, focusing on a case study on forest fires in Chile.
08/03/2024
On March 8, 2024, postdoc Michelle Westerlaken will co-host a panel discussion on art and science at the Annual Meeting of WTMC (Netherlands Graduate Research School of Science, Technology, and Modern Culture) in The Hague (NL). This panel is organized together with Dr. Marieke Meesters and Prof. Esther Turnhout. WTMC is a collective effort of scholars based in the Netherlands who study the development of science, technology and modern culture from an interdisciplinary perspective.
28/11/2023
Jennifer Gabrys discusses the concept of a ‘smart’ forest, shares her insights into Chile’s pluralistic approaches to preventing and managing forest fires, and discusses the inclusion of Chile as a case study in the project. The interview occurred during Jennifer’s fieldwork visit in November 2023.
20/11/2023
Drawing on work from the Smart Forests project, Jennifer Gabrys considers the shapeshifting relationship between forests and technologies–where forests increasingly perform as technologies, and how forests and technologies are reconstituted as they are deployed to address environmental change. The talk takes place on 20 November 2023 as part of the EGENIS seminar organised by Exeter University.