Mapping Ecological Violence: A workshop with Forensic Architecture

The Warfare Ecologies Project, part of Pathways to Sustainability, is organising a two-day workshop in collaboration with the Contesting Governance Platform and Ecologies of Violence. This two-day workshop, on 7 and 8 May, brings together researchers and members of Forensic Architecture to explore how their tools, technologies, and investigative approaches can inform and enrich participants’ own research practices. Rather than focusing solely on their casework, the workshop is 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. 

During this workshop, researchers from Forensic Architecture, including Davide Piscitelli and Agata Nguyen Chuong, will join us for a two-day workshop on methods for investigating ecological violence.

The workshop explores how investigative tools such as open-source research, spatial analysis, remote sensing, and visualisation can help document and analyse environmental destruction and ecological harm, particularly in conflict-affected or contested environments.

The first day is a small-scale workshop for invited participants, colleagues, and Forensic Architecture researchers, where participants will discuss their own research projects and reflect on how these investigative approaches can be applied across different fields. Participants are invited to come prepared with a 1–2 page outline of their current research project.

The second day features a public lecture by Forensic Architecture on contemporary practices of documenting ecological violence and environmental harm. It reflects on the role of investigative practices in the current moment, where environmental damage, warfare, extractivism, and infrastructural violence increasingly intersect, and where open-source technologies play a growing role in producing public truth claims. 

7 May, 12:00-18:00, Workshop
8 May, 15:00-18:00, Lecture by Forensic Architecture

Public lecture

“A Cartography of Genocide in Gaza and The Environmental Continuum of Genocide in Namibia” is a two part public lecture by Forensic Architecture that focuses on contemporary practices of documenting ecological violence and environmental harm. The lecture reflects on the growing intersections between warfare, environmental destruction, extractivism, and infrastructural violence, and considers the role of open-source technologies in producing public truth claims.

"A Cartography of Genocide" documents the scale and patterns of violence in Gaza since October 2023, compiling evidence of widespread attacks on civilian life, infrastructure, the health system, aid, and the environment. This lecture draws on more than two and a half years of investigation and reveals how, even beyond the ceasefire, the genocide persists and continues to evolve.

"The Environmental Continuum of Genocide in Namibia" examines the genocide perpetrated against the Nama and Ovaherero at the start of the 20th century as part of a longer process of land dispossession, proposing a novel method of sensing the durational effects of colonial violence through the phenomenon of bush encroachment.