During the Summer School we will explore vernacular understandings of marine biodiversity in local life and ordinary places. To do this, we will meet several actors/stakeholders who have daily interactions with marine worlds: marine biologists, government officials, entrepreneurs working with aquaculture and tourism, educators in museums, and representatives of the local population. Through excursions, conversations, and time spent in the laboratory, the participants of the summer school will learn how different actors perceive marine biodiversity and its changes. We will learn about their methods and ways of knowing the sea, and we will visit sites that help us understand the practices and predicaments by which they interact with and know marine species. Parallel to the school’s emphasis on learning from “multispecies human brokers”, interactive discussion and reading sessions will provide opportunities to exchange ideas and process the experiences in the
light of academic and disciplinary interests and concerns.

Life in most places unfolds in relation to constantly changing circumstances and multitudes of other living beings that constitute multi-species entanglements. Thus, the focus of the BIOrdinary Summer School this year is vernacular marine entanglements. Vernacular marine entanglements encourage us to think beyond the binary of endemic, native species with a
right to belong and “invasive” species out of place that has been a dominant starting point for ecological research and policy agendas on biodiversity. Attentiveness to vernacular understandings gives us an opportunity to explore different perceptions of the environment from biologists, locals, multispecies brokers, and perhaps also the sea creatures themselves. By engaging with a range of different ways of knowing and being (entangled), we explore the predicaments along with challenges when it comes to defining and practicing biodiversity. Considering more basic ontological differences in these perceptions as well as possibilities for what we call “troubled coexistence,” the school also asks critical questions about what a more inclusive multispecies biodiversity agenda might entail.

Summer school program (917 Kb)

For more information contact:

Ivana Macek or Bengt G Karlsson