Looking back at Forensic Architecture workshop

We were thrilled to co-host a two-day workshop “Mapping Ecological Violence” with the London-based investigative agency Forensic Architecture (FA). The workshop was designed as a space for methodological exchange: how ways of seeing, sensing, mapping, and evidencing ecological violence and harm travel across disciplines and research contexts.

On Thursday May 7 we had a day-long workshop with an inspiring interdisciplinary group of 25 fellow researchers, journalists and students. During the day, Forensic Architecture Researchers Agata Nguyen Chuong and Davide Piscitelli walked us through FA’s 1. Tools and Techniques of spatial analysis and visualisation methods, 2. ground truthing and situated testimony, and 3. the forum and techniques of making research public. Participants then divided into break-away rooms to consider how these methods could inform the individual projects of each participant.

On Friday May 8 we followed the theme of ecological violence with a sold out two-part public lecture by Davide on “A Cartography of Genocide in Gaza”, and Agata on “The Environmental Continuum of Genocide in Namibia.” The lecture focused on contemporary practices of documenting ecological violence and environmental harm, and reflected on the intersections between warfare, environmental destruction, extractivism, and infrastructural violence, including the role of open-source technologies in producing public truth claims.

The event was hosted alongside the Warfare Ecologies project and the Contesting Governance Research Platform at Utrecht University.