Ars Biologica Independent Studies (ABIS) Programme – Multispecies Research Module 2026

Edge Effects: Multispecies Methods at the Boundary

Edge Effects: Multispecies Methods at the Boundary

Things intensify at the edge. In landscapes, edges, or boundary zones, are sites of heightened biodiversity, but also of competition and vulnerability. In research, edges matter too: they are where methods meet, disciplinary habits get tested, and new forms of attention can emerge.

This four-day field workshop brings together researchers from arts and sciences for a collaborative exploration of edges and boundary zones, both ecological and disciplinary. Working in and “with” the species-rich terrain of the Novohradské Mountains, South Bohemia, we will investigate boundary zones across wetlands, ponds, rivers, old-growth forests, and meadows, asking how these zones are shaped by human and other-than-human activity, and what forms of interdisciplinary attention they invite.

Edge Effects builds on its 2025 edition Perma~cultural Thinking in Multispecies Research, where we collectively mapped methods of multispecies inquiry across our disciplines and took them 'for a walk' in the Kluk forest near České Budějovice. Our aim was to test what these methods can do in practice and how they might complement or conflict with each other. Field notes, observations, and sensory impressions gathered during the walk became the first material for the Multispecies Research Almanac, an open-access zine dedicated to interdisciplinary attentiveness in multispecies research.

In 2026, we turn more deliberately to edges, asking what they demand of our methods: how do different disciplines notice, describe, and relate to boundary zones in multispecies inquiry? What happens when scientific observation and artistic experimentation meet in an embodied field practice? Rather than smoothing over disciplinary differences, the workshop treats them as productive conditions for inquiry.

We will set ourselves in the Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which will provide a shared space for reflection, discussion, and further co-creation of the Almanac zine. The experimental publication will continue to grow until its release in 2028 at the Ars Biologica festival in České Budějovice.

Artists, scientists, and researchers across disciplines are welcome to join. The workshop is co-organised with the Multispecies Ecologies and Practices research group at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU). 

Participation is free of charge.

Free accommodation in double rooms at Nové Hrady Castle is also provided.