07/10/2022

Digital Technologies and the Future of Forests

For this Future of Forests hybrid event, Jennifer Gabrys gives an overview of the Smart Forests research project and discusses examples of digital technologies as they contribute to different forest worlds and livelihoods. “RegTech, Governance and the Future of Forests” is hosted by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and Food and Agriculture Organization for the United Nations (FAO). Tune in on 7 October 2022 for one or multiple sessions from 2-5pm CEST.

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23/09/2022

The Future is Phygital: 5G in Smart Cities and Smart Forests

5G promises to bring ‘physical’ and ‘digital’ worlds closer by enabling more rapid and extensive communications through Internet of Things networks and devices. This keynote presentation by Jennifer Gabrys will examine how urban infrastructures and forests become newly and doubly animated by the promises of 5G working with AI.

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22/09/2022

Big Data and the Environment

To promote scholarly exchange around data, governance and ethics, Big Data & Society is holding a Colloquium, featuring a series of panel discussions with experts from around the globe. Jennifer Gabrys will contribute to a session addressing issues of computing and the environment, from waste and pollution to the materiality of data. Join this online talk on 22 September at 15:30 BST via Zoom.

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23/08/2022

Digital Gardening with a Forest Atlas

During the Participatory Design Conference 2022, Michelle Westerlaken will present a co-authored paper that details the development of the Smart Forests Atlas. The Atlas expands open-data research platforms toward pluralistic and participatory practices, and works with the under-examined practice of ‘digital gardening’ to reconfigure the open-data research platform into a dynamic and participatory space for cultivating ideas and generating content.

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15/06/2022

Research Opportunity: Smart Forests Postdoctoral Researcher

The Smart Forests project is hiring a full-time postdoctoral researcher to join our team. The position is for 24 months and is based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. The deadline to submit your application is Friday, 22 July 2022. It is anticipated that interviews will take place during the week commencing 1 August 2022.

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05/05/2022

AI and Environment

Jennifer Gabrys will present “Sensing Smart Forests” as part of the NordAI seminar series “AI and Environment” on 5 May 2022. The series is curated by Tirza Meyer and Adam Wickberg from the research project “The Mediated Planet” by the Environmental Humanities Laboratory at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Running February and June 2022, the series features contributions from leading scholars working with AI at the interface between the human and non-human world, exploring the question: what constitutes the environment through the lens of artificial intelligence?

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08/03/2022

Native Seed in Restoration Workshop

Danilo Urzedo talks about the national native seed survey for landscape restoration in Brazil as part of the Native Seed in Restoration Workshop (8 March). He joins experts from around the world who work in seed-based restoration to discuss issues around native-seed supply chains.

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24/02/2022

Sound's Colonialities

For “Sound’s Colonialities: Formatting, Recording and Saving on Indigenous Lands”, Max Ritts draws from Smart Forests’ expansive research into forests, conservation politics, and digital acoustics — advancing critical questions into a central interleaving theme: coloniality. We explore how new acoustical monitoring technologies, rapidly being established to legitimately respond to escalating conservation issues worldwide, pose ethical dilemmas and material consequences for Indigenous communities whose lands, livelihoods, and ecological realities can enter their calculations in meaningful yet oftentimes unanticipated ways. This talk is part of Decolonial Research Lab at Talks.cam and takes place on 25 February 2022.

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23/02/2022

Im/materialities

Jennifer Gabrys will be presenting at “Im/materialities — Structural tensions between AI and the environment” on 24 February. This panel discussion by the JUST AI Network will explore the possibilities and limitations of AI as a solution to the climate crisis. Register via the link.

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23/02/2022

Media Ecologies

For the Center for Comparative Media at Columbia University’s “Media Ecologies” seminar series, Jennifer Gabrys will present “The Forest that Walks: Digital Fieldwork and Distributions of Site” on 25 February 2022. The series brings together a diverse set of thinkers examining the relationship between technology and the bodies that interact with them.

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10/02/2022

Instruments of Change

Jennifer Gabrys will speak on the theme “Sensed Landscapes (Mapping Change)” as part of “Instruments of Change” — a multi-day symposium focused on the technological and scientific frontiers of sensing, simulating, and experimentation in the landscape. This session on 15 February 2022 examines the use of both ground-based sensors and aerial and satellite-gathered imagery for mapping landscape change. The series is hosted by the Environmental Modeling Lab (EMLab) at the University of Pennsylvania.

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14/01/2022

DH beyond the Human

Michelle Westerlaken speaks about multispecies worlds in this “DH Beyond the Human” Lightning Lunch on 14 January 2022. She is joined by digital humanities scholars who research plants, animals, fish and fungi. Hosted by the Critical Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Toronto.

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13/12/2021

Digitalization and Restoration

As part of the symposium, “Ecological Restoration and the Conservation of Biological Diversity” on 13 December 2021, Danilo Urzedo examines the digitalization of forest landscape restoration. He particularly explores how technologies impact stakeholder engagement and inequality.

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03/12/2021

Narratives about Earth

For this “Narratives about Earth” evening of films and talks, Jennifer Gabrys will give a lecture that addresses the topic of the planetary and outlines “Being Planetary as Praxis,” a concept that informs the ethos of her Planetary Praxis research group. Co-hosted by La Loge and Goethe-Institut Brussels as part of the “Constellations for Futures” that investigates ecology, art, community, and science.

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02/12/2021

Sentience and Smart Forests

As part of the “Sentience” lecture series, Jennifer Gabrys investigates the sensory arrangements that Smart Forests generate. The presentation considers how sensory infrastructures materialize as distributions of power and governance, while detailing the sensory practices of humans and more than humans that transform and potentially re-constitute dominant regimes of perception toward other inhabitations and milieus. Organized by the Centre for Sensory Studies and Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University.

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18/11/2021

Interrogating Global Traces of Infrastructure

This infrastructure series critically explores infrastructures, with this second workshop focusing on global infrastructures. Jennifer Gabrys will participate in a panel to discuss infrastructure and collective world making.

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17/11/2021

AI for Earth: Investigating the Social Consequences of Environmental Technologies

With a focus on Smart Forest technologies, Jennifer Gabrys will consider the social consequences of environmental technologies in a keynote presented as part of this series of Cambridge Zero Research Symposia.

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17/11/2021

Smart Forests and the Vegetalization of Digital Technologies

As part of the Humlab’s 20th anniversary conference at Umeå University, Jennifer Gabrys will give a keynote that explores the digitalization of forests, and how forests become media.

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29/10/2021

Sonic Eco-Surveillance

Max Ritts presents “Social and Political Consequences of Acoustical Monitoring Networks,” at the Anthropology and Conservation Conference (25-29 October). He reviews some of the general trends exhibited in the “sonic eco-surveillant” turn in conservation, drawing on examples from around the world.

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21/10/2021

Sensing Smart Forests

As part of the event, “Human Entities 2021: Culture in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” Jennifer Gabrys will present work on “Sensing Smart Forests.” The talk will be presented online, but held in the open-air environment of Palácio Sinel de Cordes, Campo Santa Clara 142-145 in Lisbon, Portugal.

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