Michelle Westerlaken
Biographic Data
| ID | 1616424 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michelle Westerlaken |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michelle |
| FAMILY NAME | Westerlaken |
| SIGNATURE | WESTERLAKEN M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8352-3736 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 10 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Actually existing smart forests: A proposal for pluralizing eco-technical worlds
The “actually existing smart city” is a familiar figure and concept within smart environments research. Usually, “actually existing” analyses challenge the often-hyperbolic proposals for smart cities by grounding research in built urban conditions. Cities are not exemplars of digital interconnectivity and seamless functioning, many smart cities researchers note. Instead, they are complicated sites of uneven urban development. Such research places…
The Forest Multiple: Composing and digitalizing wooded worlds
Designations of forests take hold in policy definitions, land use practices, community initiatives, scientific research, and entrepreneurial endeavors. These multiple forests form as distinct and often competing realities enacted through environmental practices, knowledges, and cosmologies. “The Forest Multiple” special issue explores the question of “what is a forest” to examine the diverse ways that forests materialize and are operationalized i…
Designing Biodiversity Systems via Digital Kinships: Insights from Community Data Processes and Creative Practice
This study details how digital biodiversity data is used and gains meaning in local restoration projects, how these experiences contrast with large-scale innovation patterns, and what new design recommendations emerge from these insights. Digital innovations in biodiversity technologies are increasingly complex, fast-paced, and driven by technological capacities where data generation rather than biodiversity restoration risks becoming the primary…
Digital twins and the digital logics of biodiversity
Biodiversity is a multidimensional concept that can be understood and measured in many different ways. However, the next generation of digital technologies for biodiversity monitoring currently being funded and developed fail to engage its multidimensional and relational aspects. Based on empirical data from interviews, a conference visit, online meetings, webinars, and project reports, this study articulates four digital logics that structure ho…
Unsettling Participation by Foregrounding More-than-Human Relations in Digital Forests
The question of who participates in making forest environments usually refers to human stakeholders. Yet forests are constituted through the participation of many other entities. At the same time, digital technologies are increasingly used in participatory projects to measure and monitor forest environments globally. However, such participatory initiatives are often limited to human involvement and overlook how more-than-human entities and relati…
Digitalizing forest landscape restoration: A Social and Political Analysis of Emerging Technological Practices
Digital technologies are increasingly influencing forest landscape restoration practices worldwide. We investigate how digital platforms specifically reconfigure restoration practices, resources, and policy across scales. By analyzing digital restoration platforms, we identify four drivers of technological developments, including: scientific expertise to optimize decisions; capacity building through digital networks; digital tree-planting markets…
Multispecies worlding through design
No abstract available
Reworking the political in digital forests: The cosmopolitics of socio-technical worlds
Forests are increasingly central to policies and initiatives to address global environmental change. Digital technologies have become crucial components of these projects as the tools and systems that would monitor and manage forests for storing carbon, preserving biodiversity, and providing ecosystem services. Historically, technologies have been instrumental in forming forests as spaces of conservation, extraction, and inhabitation. Digital tec…
It matters what designs design designs: Speculations on multispecies worlding
Critical contemporary discourses on extinction, climate change and planetary boundaries are needed to counter and reject our current ways of living on this planet. But they often end badly. Therefore, we also need to tell the stories that create openings and generate more desirable alternatives. This paper contributes to the effort of resituating design as less anthropocentric and much more of a multispecies affair. Following scholars such as Don…
What is the opposite of speciesism? On relational care ethics and illustrating multi-species-isms
Purpose This paper articulates a counter-concept to the notion of speciesism with the aim to encourage thinking beyond critique, towards imagining what non-speciesist worlds can actually look like. Design/methodology/approach By using the concept of “multi-species-isms” (or “multispecies”, as a simpler adjective), and linking it to feminist and relational ethics of “care”, the paper seeks to unite perspectives from both Critical Animal Studies as…
Reworking the political in digital forests: The cosmopolitics of socio-technical worlds
Forests are increasingly central to policies and initiatives to address global environmental change. Digital technologies have become crucial components of these projects as the tools and systems that would monitor and manage forests for storing carbon, preserving biodiversity, and providing ecosystem services. Historically, technologies have been instrumental in forming forests as spaces of conservation, extraction, and inhabitation. Digital tec…
What is the opposite of speciesism? On relational care ethics and illustrating multi-species-isms
Purpose This paper articulates a counter-concept to the notion of speciesism with the aim to encourage thinking beyond critique, towards imagining what non-speciesist worlds can actually look like. Design/methodology/approach By using the concept of “multi-species-isms” (or “multispecies”, as a simpler adjective), and linking it to feminist and relational ethics of “care”, the paper seeks to unite perspectives from both Critical Animal Studies as…
Digital twins and the digital logics of biodiversity
Biodiversity is a multidimensional concept that can be understood and measured in many different ways. However, the next generation of digital technologies for biodiversity monitoring currently being funded and developed fail to engage its multidimensional and relational aspects. Based on empirical data from interviews, a conference visit, online meetings, webinars, and project reports, this study articulates four digital logics that structure ho…
Digitalizing forest landscape restoration: A Social and Political Analysis of Emerging Technological Practices
Digital technologies are increasingly influencing forest landscape restoration practices worldwide. We investigate how digital platforms specifically reconfigure restoration practices, resources, and policy across scales. By analyzing digital restoration platforms, we identify four drivers of technological developments, including: scientific expertise to optimize decisions; capacity building through digital networks; digital tree-planting markets…
It matters what designs design designs: Speculations on multispecies worlding
Critical contemporary discourses on extinction, climate change and planetary boundaries are needed to counter and reject our current ways of living on this planet. But they often end badly. Therefore, we also need to tell the stories that create openings and generate more desirable alternatives. This paper contributes to the effort of resituating design as less anthropocentric and much more of a multispecies affair. Following scholars such as Don…
It matters what designs design designs: Speculations on multispecies worlding
Critical contemporary discourses on extinction, climate change and planetary boundaries are needed to counter and reject our current ways of living on this planet. But they often end badly. Therefore, we also need to tell the stories that create openings and generate more desirable alternatives. This paper contributes to the effort of resituating design as less anthropocentric and much more of a multispecies affair. Following scholars such as Don…
What is the opposite of speciesism? On relational care ethics and illustrating multi-species-isms
Purpose This paper articulates a counter-concept to the notion of speciesism with the aim to encourage thinking beyond critique, towards imagining what non-speciesist worlds can actually look like. Design/methodology/approach By using the concept of “multi-species-isms” (or “multispecies”, as a simpler adjective), and linking it to feminist and relational ethics of “care”, the paper seeks to unite perspectives from both Critical Animal Studies as…
Multispecies worlding through design
No abstract available
Reworking the political in digital forests: The cosmopolitics of socio-technical worlds
Forests are increasingly central to policies and initiatives to address global environmental change. Digital technologies have become crucial components of these projects as the tools and systems that would monitor and manage forests for storing carbon, preserving biodiversity, and providing ecosystem services. Historically, technologies have been instrumental in forming forests as spaces of conservation, extraction, and inhabitation. Digital tec…
Unsettling Participation by Foregrounding More-than-Human Relations in Digital Forests
The question of who participates in making forest environments usually refers to human stakeholders. Yet forests are constituted through the participation of many other entities. At the same time, digital technologies are increasingly used in participatory projects to measure and monitor forest environments globally. However, such participatory initiatives are often limited to human involvement and overlook how more-than-human entities and relati…
Digitalizing forest landscape restoration: A Social and Political Analysis of Emerging Technological Practices
Digital technologies are increasingly influencing forest landscape restoration practices worldwide. We investigate how digital platforms specifically reconfigure restoration practices, resources, and policy across scales. By analyzing digital restoration platforms, we identify four drivers of technological developments, including: scientific expertise to optimize decisions; capacity building through digital networks; digital tree-planting markets…
Digital twins and the digital logics of biodiversity
Biodiversity is a multidimensional concept that can be understood and measured in many different ways. However, the next generation of digital technologies for biodiversity monitoring currently being funded and developed fail to engage its multidimensional and relational aspects. Based on empirical data from interviews, a conference visit, online meetings, webinars, and project reports, this study articulates four digital logics that structure ho…
Actually existing smart forests: A proposal for pluralizing eco-technical worlds
The “actually existing smart city” is a familiar figure and concept within smart environments research. Usually, “actually existing” analyses challenge the often-hyperbolic proposals for smart cities by grounding research in built urban conditions. Cities are not exemplars of digital interconnectivity and seamless functioning, many smart cities researchers note. Instead, they are complicated sites of uneven urban development. Such research places…
The Forest Multiple: Composing and digitalizing wooded worlds
Designations of forests take hold in policy definitions, land use practices, community initiatives, scientific research, and entrepreneurial endeavors. These multiple forests form as distinct and often competing realities enacted through environmental practices, knowledges, and cosmologies. “The Forest Multiple” special issue explores the question of “what is a forest” to examine the diverse ways that forests materialize and are operationalized i…
Designing Biodiversity Systems via Digital Kinships: Insights from Community Data Processes and Creative Practice
This study details how digital biodiversity data is used and gains meaning in local restoration projects, how these experiences contrast with large-scale innovation patterns, and what new design recommendations emerge from these insights. Digital innovations in biodiversity technologies are increasingly complex, fast-paced, and driven by technological capacities where data generation rather than biodiversity restoration risks becoming the primary…
Computer Science (9 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Data science (4 works) · Epistemology (4 works) · Geographies of human-animal interactions (4 works) · Innovative Human-Technology Interaction (4 works) · Political science (4 works) · Biology (3 works) · Business (3 works) · Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (3 works)