Milkweed Co-Lab

Speculative geographies + Research-creation

OUR MISSION

Imagining better futures that generate hope and stronger relationships with nature.

The Milkweed Co-Lab is a collective and a lab. We are a group of scholars that are growing together in research and interdisciplinary pursuits. We investigate more-than-human futures using creative methods to generate new knowledge with other-than-humans, graduate students, visiting scholars, and artists. In the Co-Lab’s more-than-human approach, we explore the vital relationships for a healthy planet that reveal the elements of care, reciprocity, degrowth and posthuman responsibility.

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DEFINITIONS

More-than-human

There are a couple of ways the term more-than-human is investigated and applied in the literature. In one way, more-than-human describes how technology is developing as an extension of the human experience. Differently, it is about shifting the focus from human-centric priorities. More-than-human is an ecological adjective deployed to decenter the human, to prioritize other species and natural elements as agents in an interconnected world

Other-than-human

Refers to any entity, force, or being that exists outside the boundaries of humanity. In the humanities, environmental studies, and Indigenous worldviews, it intentionally replaces the standard term non-human, avoiding the implication that humanity is the default or superior baseline

Research-creation

Is a form of research modeled on emergence. Through design, practice, and experimentation, new knowledge can emerge (Loveless 2019). The Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada defines research-creation as “An approach to research that combines creative and academic research practices and supports the development of knowledge and innovation through artistic expression, scholarly investigation, and experimentation. The creation process is situated within the research activity and produces critically informed work in a variety of media (art forms)” (https://sshrc-crsh.canada.ca/en/funding/terminology.aspx#22)

The Co-Lab deploys research-creation activities like multisensory observations and recordings (audio, visual), multimedia experimental creation in the field with other-than-humans, or creative writing. The goal is not to produce finished artistic pieces, but to use creative methods to investigate landscapes. Often, the outcomes are prototypes or pieces that reveal designs in nature

Speculative geography

Is a young sub-discipline developing to investigate future landscapes, using methods in strategic foresight (scenarios, projections, modelling, gamification) and accessing speculative fictions (science fiction, climate fiction) as sources and imaginary environments where authors have speculated upon environmental interventions, human reactions to environmental outcomes, and unconventional human-environment interactions. The practice of speculative geography is closely aligned to environmental humanities because the outcomes are often imaginative and creative in nature.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Exploring speculative food futures with community arts practice in Waterloo Region

(2025-2026)

The project seeks to re-imagine and map pathways toward food system transformations for a brighter, more self-sufficient future in Canada. The project asks the following research questions:

How can we help people (residents, planners, community builders) to imagine post-growth food futures in the Region of Waterloo, in which we can live within ecological limits and prioritize the wellbeing of humans and non-humans?
Utilizing various mapping and modeling tools, how can we chart food system transformation pathways, including leverage points, bifurcations and potential problems?
Assuming a post-growth future is possible, what are some of the material outcomes (artifacts, technologies) of the necessary food system transformations?

This project is supported in part by the Mitacs Globalink Research Student Internship program.

Designing More-Than-Human Futures: Using research-creation to locate opportunities for radical co-existence

(2026-2028)

An interdisciplinary project to trial novel research-creation methods for prototyping more-than-human microhabitats and narratives that facilitate understandings of radical co-existence in the future. The project seeks to answer the questions:

How can we help people to imagine more-than-human futures where humans can live within environmental limits and prioritize the wellbeing of nonhumans as well as themselves?
How can research-creation methods be deployed to foster cross-species collaborations that produce artifacts, microhabitats or narratives for a more-than-human future?