Dr Michelle Westerlaken is a Research Associate on the Smart Forests project. As an interdisciplinary researcher and designer her work builds on posthumanism, feminist technoscience, STS, critical animal studies, decolonial theory, and participatory design methods to investigate possibilities for humans and other species for more relational —multispecies— ways of living on this planet. So far, these projects have involved design negotiations together with cats, dogs, ants, penguins, and various interactive technologies. Central to her work are the ways in which theory and participatory research practices continuously inform and inspire each other.
She has a PhD in Interaction Design from Malmö University in Sweden. Her dissertation, “Imagining Multispecies Worlds” obtained in 2020, presents a 'Multispecies Bestiary' in which 10 protagonist species (including, among others, forests, worms, mice, and monsters) guide the reader through a collection of multispecies stories. These stories illustrate a repertoire of world-making practices with other species in which we recognize and engage with the ability to respond to each other. The project involved visiting research undertaken at the Hong-Kong Polytechnic University, Laguna College of Art and Design in California, and The University of Malta.
Besides doing research, she taught undergraduate and graduate courses on the topics of design theory, playful interaction, interactive storytelling, and experimental game design. What draws her into the woods can be summarized as a desire to learn to observe, care for, and forage within the multispecies worlds that are made as forests increasingly express themselves through sensing technologies.
