Sensoriography: Immersing, Recording, and Storying the Senses in More-Than-Human Worlds

Autor/innen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2026.17.1.5905

Schlagworte:

multispecies, multisensory, ethnographic writing, methodologies, storytelling

Abstract

Multispecies research relies on multisensory methods to know other earthly beings. This new mode of research faces a double challenge: how to know others in multi-sensory ways and how to document and communicate them back to a human audience. Previous work has expanded on the need for combining multispecies and multisensory modalities. However, limited scholarship speaks to this approach’s practical challenges, including how to re-visit, re-write, and ethically re-present sensory experiences with other species long after fieldwork. This paper explicitly addresses these challenges with an experimental process we consider “sensoriographic.” A sensoriographic practice iterates through sensory experiences, such that they span spatio-temporal divides from immersive fieldwork and the (inevitable re-)turn to writing. Sensoriographic sensibilities shift the focus from singular encounters to recursively reliving experiences, asking researchers to synthesise the many partialities of knowing. We ponder: How do we overcome sensory biases like sight and individual experience while immersing in multispecies fieldwork? How do we deal with the ephemerality of sensory experiences and the fallibility of our memory in recording data? And how do we speak alongside and with other-than-human creatures as we try to write worlds thick with more-than-human life? Across diverse locations and with diverse species, we come together to stay with the trouble of immersing, recording, and storying the senses as we seek to create more responsive multispecies stories.

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Autor/innen-Biografien

Maya Hey, University of Helsinki

Maya Hey is an expert in human–microbe relations related in food settings, holding degrees in dietetics, food studies, and communications. As a postdoctoral researcher with the Centre for the Social Study of Microbes, she researches fermentation and its material practices for knowing microbes outside of laboratory settings. She is the author of the forthcoming monograph, Ongoing Song: Fermentation and Living with Microbes (University of Minnesota Press), which examines a natural sake brewery in Japan through sensory/multispecies ethnographies. Across collaborative projects, she brings intersectional, non-Western, and multispecies perspectives to map out human response-ability in a more-than-human world.

L. Sasha Gora, University of Augburg

L. Sasha Gora is a cultural historian and writer working at the intersection between food studies, the environmental humanities, and contemporary art. Her research focuses on restaurant politics and cultural representation, the relationship between eating and ecology, and the blue humanities, which is to say all things watery (and often salty). Funded by the Elite Network of Bavaria, she is the project director and principal investigator of the "Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture, and Environment" international research group at the University of Augsburg. Her first book–Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada–was published by the University of Toronto in 2025.

Sevgi Mutlu Sirakova, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Rachel Carson Center

I am pursuing my PhD in the Environment and Society Doctoral Program at the LMU Rachel Carson Center in Munich. After studying biology and spending over 15 years actively involved in environmental campaigns and politics in Turkey, I pursued a second master’s degree at UCL, which led me to my PhD. My academic research focuses on traditional fermentation practices in my home countries, Bulgaria and Turkey, where I trace the microbial stories that emerge from these cultures. Recently, I have been conducting ethnographic research on traditional yoghurt-making methods within my own community.

Philine Schiller, University of Augsburg

Philine Schiller is a doctoral candidate at the University of Augsburg, where she is part of the “Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture and Environment” research group led by Dr. L. Sasha Gora. Her research investigates how ecological and culinary shifts intersect and how food writing reflects these shifts in our cultural and gastronomic sensibilities. Specifically, she examines the gastronomic history of the oyster in North America in conjunction with notions of culinary extinction and the ethics of eating endangered foods. She serves as co-editor of the Graduate Journal of Food Studies and holds a M.Ed. in English and Spanish from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Lena M. Schlegel, Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg

Lena is a postdoctoral researcher at the working group for Cultural Geography and Society-Environment Research at FAU Erlangen. She holds degrees in political science, peace and conflict studies, and sociology. Her research spans posthuman and feminist theories, environmental crises, and the cultural aspects of sustainability transformations. In her doctoral research, conducted at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich, and as a visiting researcher at the University of Melbourne, she explored notions of multispecies care in the aftermath of the Australian Black Summer Bushfires.

Penelope Volinia, University of Augsburg

Penelope Volinia is a culinary environmental humanities PhD Researcher at the University of Augsburg, where she is part of the “Off the Menu: Appetites, Culture, and Environment” research group led by Dr. L. Sasha Gora. Her focus is on how cuisines adopt or reject “invasive” species, and reflects how the shifts in human appetites shape cultural and gastronomic sensibilities. Although she is currently diving deep into the (culinary) Blue Humanities, she jumps from a background that spans between design (BA in Graphic Design and Communication, IUAV) and ethnobotany (MA in Food Innovation and Management, UNISG).

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Veröffentlicht

2026-10-31

Ausgabe

Bd. 17 Nr. 2 (2026): Eco-Crip Cultures: Disability and the Environment

Rubrik

Articles: General Section

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