Introducing the CfE.
Exploring the ecologies of relationships between people, places and the living world
The Centre for Ethnoecology is an independent initiative exploring how people understand, inhabit and participate in the ecologies of which they are part.
We are interested in the relationships through which worlds are made and sustained: between people and other species, communities and landscapes, knowledge and practice, cultural traditions and ecological processes.
We explore how these relationships develop, how they are understood, how they change, and what happens when different ways of living in and understanding the world meet.
Ethnoecology provides a starting point for investigating these questions. Drawing on anthropology, ecology, environmental history, ethnography, geography, linguistics, folklore and other fields, we seek to understand the diverse ways in which people encounter, interpret and participate in their environments. We are equally interested in the ecological processes, material conditions, institutions and other living beings that shape those encounters, whether or not their influence is recognised by the people involved.
Relationships exist beyond our recognition of them.
A central premise of our work is that relationships do not depend upon being recognised, named or understood by those involved.
A river may connect communities, industries, farms, habitats and distant settlements through the movement of water, nutrients, pollutants and living organisms. Those connections remain consequential whether or not the people and institutions involved understand them as relationships.
A woodland management decision may affect fungi, insects, birds, soils and neighbouring land uses in ways that were neither intended nor anticipated. A traditional craft may depend upon relationships between people, seasonal cycles, particular plant populations, land ownership, inherited skills and local economies, even when only some of these connections are consciously acknowledged.
Recognising relationality does not require us to assume that all participants understand a relationship in the same way, share the same interests, or even recognise that a relationship exists.
Our task is to investigate these relationships as carefully as possible, exploring both how they are experienced and understood by those involved and how they operate within wider ecological, social and material contexts.
Situated knowledge, without arbitrary or universal claims
Knowledge and understanding emerge from particular positions within the world. What people notice, how they interpret their experiences, and what they come to know are shaped by their histories, languages, practices, relationships, interests and material circumstances.
We therefore approach knowledge as situated rather than universal. An understanding developed through a particular community's relationship with a landscape, a craftsperson's engagement with a material, or a scientist's investigation of an ecological process reflects particular experiences, methods and circumstances. Such knowledge may be valuable and illuminating without necessarily being transferable to every other context.
However, situated understanding does not mean that knowledge is arbitrary, that every interpretation is equally well supported, or that meaningful comparisons between different accounts are impossible. Interpretations can be examined in relation to evidence, experience, material conditions, historical context and their ability to account for what happens. Claims can be questioned, tested and revised, while recognising that different methods may reveal different aspects of a situation.
We are interested in how knowledge is produced, shared, contested and applied, and in what becomes visible or remains overlooked from different positions. We seek to bring perspectives into conversation without collapsing their differences into a single account or treating one particular worldview as a universal standard.
This approach allows us to take diverse forms of knowledge seriously while remaining open to critical examination. It also encourages us to recognise the limits of our own perspectives and to resist the temptation to turn particular experiences or cultural understandings into general prescriptions for how everyone ought to relate to the living world.
More than one way of knowing
Ecologies are encountered through many different forms of knowledge and experience.
Scientific research, practical skill, oral history, folklore, personal observation, artistic expression, local and Indigenous knowledge, and the embodied experience of working with land and living materials can all offer insights into particular relationships. Each has its own histories, methods, strengths and limitations.
We are interested in bringing these perspectives into conversation without assuming that they are interchangeable or that they must ultimately produce a single, unified account.
A craftsperson's understanding of a material, an ecologist's observations of a habitat, a community's memories of a landscape and an institution's records of land use may describe different aspects of a shared situation. Their differences can be as informative as their points of agreement.
Understanding these perspectives requires attention not only to what people know, but also to how they have come to know it, the relationships through which that knowledge is sustained, and the circumstances in which it may be useful or limited.
From intimate encounters to wider ecologies
Our interests extend across scales, from the intimate and everyday to the extensive and interconnected.
We might investigate how a person learns to recognise a plant, how a community maintains a traditional craft, how farmers respond to changing seasonal conditions, or how the presence of a particular species influences the management of a landscape. We might also explore how these experiences connect to wider processes involving land ownership, public policy, infrastructure, markets, climate change and ecological transformation.
These scales are not separate. The intimate experience of working with a material may depend upon distant supply chains, historical patterns of land use and the ecological conditions that allow the material to exist. Equally, decisions made at institutional or landscape scales ultimately affect the possibilities available to individual people, communities and other living beings.
We are interested in following these connections wherever they lead, rather than assuming in advance which scale, discipline or category of explanation is most important.
Understanding relationships in order to inform practice
Research is not an end in itself. We want to understand how insights into relationships can contribute to more thoughtful decisions, more responsive practices and better-informed conversations about the futures of the places we inhabit.
This includes examining existing practices and institutions, identifying overlooked connections, understanding sources of conflict and exploring possibilities for change. It also requires recognising that relationships are dynamic: interventions can produce unintended consequences, established practices can acquire new meanings, and changes in one part of an ecology can alter conditions elsewhere.
Our work therefore connects inquiry with practical questions concerning land management, nature recovery, food production, traditional crafts, community life, environmental governance and the stewardship of places.
The Centre has a particular interest in the River Trent catchment and the diverse human and more-than-human communities whose lives intersect there. We see the catchment not simply as a geographical boundary or a collection of environmental assets, but as a changing ecology of relationships shaped by water, land, organisms, histories, livelihoods, infrastructures and decisions.
An open and evolving conversation
The Centre for Ethnoecology brings together people who observe, investigate, make, manage, remember and care for particular places and the relationships within them.
We welcome different disciplines, forms of evidence, practical experiences and ways of asking questions. Through research, collaboration, writing, events and the sharing of lived experience, we seek to develop a richer understanding of the ecologies in which we participate.
Our ambition is not to prescribe a universal way of relating to the living world. It is to investigate the relationships that already exist, including those that remain overlooked or unrecognised; to understand how different participants experience and influence them; and to explore what these insights might mean for the ways we live, work and make decisions together.
Everything exists within ecologies of relationships. Understanding them begins with being willing to look closely, question our assumptions and follow the connections wherever they lead.
Exploring people and place towards regenerative futures.
The Centre for Ethnoecology investigates the relationships that shape our shared worlds, bringing different perspectives together to inform how we understand and care for the places we inhabit.