The Call

International Call for Collaboration: Critical Forest Studies Collaboratory

Conveners: Associate Professor David Rousell (RMIT), Dr Cher Hill (Simon Fraser), Dr Mark Harvey (University of Auckland), Dr John Ryan (Notre Dame Australia), Dr Gideon Boadu (RMIT), Jelena Aleksic (RMIT), Dr Jessica Tran (RMIT), Corry Antang (RMIT), Professor Wendy Steele (RMIT), Dr Sarah Barns (RMIT),

You are invited to join an international Collaboratory for critical, transdisciplinary studies with forests and treescapes. The Collaboratory looks to seed new connections by bridging fields of research and practice in the environmental humanities, education, and social sciences; environmental arts, regenerative design, and urban planning; and environmental/earth system sciences. We are a vibrant interdisciplinary community with the shared aim of establishing ‘critical forest studies’ as a collective platform for relational, transdisciplinary, and collaborative research.

In 2026, we published the very first special issue on Critical Forest Studies in the Australian Journal of Environmental Education, featuring 26 articles by researchers from 15 different countries:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/australian-journal-of-environmental-education/collections/critical-forest-studies-seeding-a-new-field-from-underground-to-overstory

Please also visit our YouTube channel for videos made by authors from the special issue: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0-yXDmfvM0sdFwaE5sg1w6bdCN5N_pzE

Respectful and responsible engagements with First Peoples' perspectives and knowledges are central to the work of the Collaboratory, as are questions of how intergenerational relations with forests produce and perpetuate different histories and futurities. Child, youth, and community framed practices of co-creation form a shared commitment to reciprocal exchange and collective experimentation for many members of the collective.

The Collaboratory builds on recent participatory projects including Treescapes: Voices of the Futures (led by Kate Pahl, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK), Local Alternatives (led by David Rousell, RMIT, Australia), Caring for Salmon Like Family (led by Cher Hill, Simon Fraser University, Canada) and Wild Hope: Conversations for a Planetary Commons (led by Wendy Steele, Naomi Stead, Fleur Watson, Katrina Simon, RMIT Australia). It aims to map and extend international connections emerging from critical ‘hotspots’ highlighted through these projects, including:

• Forests as sentient, interspecies learning communities (vegetal/animal/fungal/mineral)
• Forests as places of intergenerational knowledge creation, languaging, and storying
• Forests as places where different worlds, natures, cultures, politics, and sciences meet
• Forests as places of urban and regional regeneration, decay, repair, and reimagining
• Forests as sites of collective memory, trauma, history-making, and healing
• Forests as ecologies of sensation, technicity, temporality, and speculation

Germination Call: Please send us 1-2 images, a link, video and/or sound file (if you have one), and some writing (up to 500 words) that elaborates your work with forests as a relational practice. This work will be hosted on the Collaboratory web platform which we envision as a digital ‘planting’ of international examples. Please ensure that you have ethical consent for public sharing where necessary.

We invite members to host connected events in your own locations. Please let us know if you’d like to organise your own event and connect with our transnational network!