Corinna Dean Research 2025

Gender Ecologies

Funded through the British Council Pakistan

Liminal Listening: Whispers of Amphibious Worlds is an ecocultural learning platform that bridges art, design and ecological engagement in which designers, architects, artists and communities work together across multiple sites globally. The first workshop took place at the Manipal Srishti Institute, Department of Adaptive Ecologies & Climate Extremes, Bangalore, in January 2025.

One outcome of the project is to produce a critical glossary that collects key terms and concepts explored during the Liminal Listening workshop. It also explores afterthoughts and speculative frameworks grounded in interdisciplinary research on liminal ecologies, immersive design and sustainability.

As part of the project, my recent field work, Gender Ecologies, established a collaboration between groups of river activists in Pakistan and the UK, specfically focused on the River Lea in London. The project sought to uncover more-than-human justice between colonial and industrial landscapes. Our reciprocal projects in the Indus (Karachi), Ravi (Lahore) and River Lea (London), explored actions for new socio-environmental relationships through narrative and the moving image.

Gender Ecologies seeks to frame an approach to landscape literacy, referencing Anna Tsing’s ‘Patchy anthropocene’. The multiple outcomes of the project, including films and co-produced projects with nature and communities around the River Lea, consider how we can better read landscapes. The co-production projects include floating reed beds supporting phytoremediation, and an outdoor learning classroom for transitory environments to enable future socio-environmental commoning.