Funded Projects
2025 has been a year full of radical imagination, and deep ecological reflection for the Critical Pathways community. Our community members have spent the year moving beyond purely technical solutions to explore the social, cultural, and political dimensions of the climate crisis. Here are some of the projects and initiatives made possible by Critical Pathways in 2025.
Held in the historic setting of Frederiksoord, Drenthe, this interdisciplinary event blended art, performance, and ecology to rethink our relationship with the natural world. On May 3, 2025, the artist collective potgrond invited the UU community to a unique "farewell" ceremony for the ginkgo tree. This project served as a creative exploration of species memory and ecological mourning, moving sustainability research away from pure data and toward embodied experience.
The narrative ceremony told the story of the ginkgo, a "living fossil," through a series of poems, interpretive dances, and songs that honored the tree's resilience. This was paired with the "Ontworteld" (Uprooted) exhibition, which blurred the boundaries between the garden and the gallery to confront the feeling of being "uprooted" in an era of environmental instability. Participants also joined a non-human mapping workshop where they found a plant or stone in the gardens and used creative drawing to express the tension between online data and their actual, lived experience with that being. By "laying the ginkgo to rest," the community explored how to acknowledge ecological loss while finding new, deeply personal ways to connect with the nature around us. Find out more here.
Another highlight is "The What If Garden: A Field Guide to Radical Imagination" which can be found here alongside more information. This zine captures the collective wisdom of researchers, artists, and curators who gathered to ask how we can move beyond the status quo. Published on May 26, 2025, the guide serves as both a reflection on a five-day intensive workshop and a practical tool for anyone looking to nurture transformative change. It invites readers to take a walk, wander, and let their imagination unfold in movement.
The guide addresses the common problem where inspiring visions for a sustainable world often fail to gain traction in actual decision-making. By providing eight core guiding principles, the project moves away from a narrow focus on technical tools and instead asks deeper questions about power dynamics and societal narratives. It encourages people to "make the familiar strange" and to redesign their everyday environments, such as the streets they walk down, to feel more inclusive and welcoming. Ultimately, "The What If Garden" stands as a testament to the community's mission to bridge the gap between art and science, proving that the first step to a better future is the courage to imagine it otherwise.
TWIG is a zine designed by Ekaterina Volkova that captures insights from a five-day workshop organized by Lisette van Beek (Lund University), Johannes Stripple (Lund University), Mark Westmoreland (Leiden University), Josephine Chambers (Utrecht University) and Ekaterina Volkova (independent).
The book talk for "Underground Politics," authored by Dr. Jesse Jonkman was held on September 18, 2025. The event brought together scholars and experts to discuss the complex sociopolitical life of gold mining in the Chocó rainforests of Colombia. The book challenges the narrative of mining frontiers as lawless or outside the reach of the state. Instead, Dr. Jonkman reveals how local communities navigate state power and criminalization by reappropriating legal and bureaucratic tools for their own ends. Rather than being passive subjects of governance, these mining stakeholders actively participate in a form of bottom up state making, turning a livelihood often deemed illegal into something mundane and lawful within their own social context. The discussion explored how gold mining gives rise to both ecological violence and cultural ideals of autonomy and prosperity. By focusing on these contentious forms of extractive organization, the project unearths how local political formations simultaneously erode and confirm state authority. Find out more here.
In October 2025, a group of over 30 international researchers and practitioners came together for the workshop Conflict Rivers: Waterways and Ecological Devastation in Visual Cultures and Practice. Together, they explored rivers as sites of conflict between local communities and global finance, property, development, extraction, and exploitation.They traced the many entanglements between waterways and violence — from hydropolitics, colonial infrastructures, and legal regimes to digital mapping, memory, and multispecies ecologies. Presentations engaged with rivers as sites of struggle and storytelling: from the Meuse and Wadi Gaza to the Cauca, Kariba, Maritsa, Clyde, Odra, and Dnipro. Speakers explored issues such as hydropower displacement, toxic militarisms, “digital twin” rivers, riverine victimhood, plantation ecologies, and aesthetic and activist interventions in watery worlds. It was amazing to see the diversity of methodologies and approaches — spanning law, anthropology, geography, film, art, and performance. The evening event, River Practices, showcased artistic and activist engagements with rivers as living archives of struggle and solidarity. With moving presentations from the ZAKOLE Collective, A Chorus of Singing Rivers, and Ameneh Solati’s Traces in Continuum, the evening reminded us that rivers not only record histories of extraction and displacement but also sustain practices of resistance, care, and repair. The event was organized by Ifor Duncan and the EcoViolence project team with the support of Critical Pathways, and the Water Cultures Community of the Network for Environmental Humanities at Utrecht University. Find out more here!
On November 25th2025, Achille Mbembe came to Utrecht to give a lecture on “Futureproof Solidarity”. Missed it? You can watch the recording of the lecture here, or read more about the fascinating event here. This event was made possible by the International Spinoza Prize Foundation, Institutions for Open Society (Gender, Diversity and Global Justice Platform), the Network for Environmental Humanities, Critical Pathways, the Netherlands School for Gender Studies and OSL: Netherlands Research school for Literary Studies.
The Critical Pathways Community Day 2025 took place on the afternoon of November 28th. The aim of this event was to bring our community together for exchange and mutual inspiration, and we were so glad to see many of you there! On the day facilitated by Absaline Hehakaya, we heard engaging talks by Naomi van Steenbergen, Alba Tiley and Luana Kiehl, participated in inspiring workshops by Brian Dermody & Wytske Versteeg, Laura op de Beke, Flora Roberts & Stefan Werning, Tim Favier & Wiebe Bor and Potgrond, and listened to a captivating conversation between Kim Stanley Robinson and Maarten Hajer. Finally, over drinks and snacks, we gathered for some great conversations. Find out more here!