16/07/2026

Community-led Forest Technologies: A Smart Forests Final Report

The Community-led Forest Technologies final report documents and analyzes the social and political impacts of digital technologies on forest communities across the globe. Drawing on five case studies and a survey of smart forest initiatives, the report reveals how these technologies can reshape environmental governance and influence how communities perceive and inhabit forest worlds. The report concludes with proposals on how these technologies can help create more just and thriving forest worlds.

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16/07/2026

Forest Technologies Workshop film launch

The short film, Forest Technologies Workshop: Co-creating Environmental Knowledge and Practice, documents a knowledge exchange workshop at Kew Gardens with policymakers, technologists, and community groups to discuss the interim project findings. In the film, key actors share their forest and technology practices, while discussing how to ensure forest technologies and developments are community-oriented.

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16/07/2026

Rainforest Regeneration in Scotland: Communities and Technologies film launch

Our final Smart Forests case study is documented through the short film, Rainforest Regeneration in Scotland: Communities and Technologies, exploring how digital technologies are facilitating temperate rainforest regeneration in four community-led projects in western Scotland.

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03/06/2026

Technologies to Address Environmental Change: Perspectives on Justice

Jennifer Gabrys participates in a plenary session as part of the “Towards a Just and Habitable World: Exploring the Role of Technology” conference, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (2-5 June).

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08/05/2026

Digital Humanities "Glitch"

As part of this PUC-Rio colloquium on Digital Humanities and the “glitch,” Jennifer Gabrys will give a keynote on Smart Forests research. Her talk will show work that investigates fire technologies and community engagement, including the Ecologies of Fire / Ecologías del Fuego collaboration and collection.

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05/05/2026

Ecologies of Fire / Ecologías del Fuego

With accelerating climate change, increasingly unsustainable land use, and clashes at wildland-urban interfaces, fires are becoming more frequent, intense, and destructive. In these shifting fire regimes, the new Smart Forests open-access collection, Ecologies of Fire / Ecologías del Fuego, explores how communities, researchers, artists, and Indigenous peoples are collectively rethinking their relationships with fire.

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05/06/2025

Social and Political Sciences at Two Degrees

Jennifer Gabrys presents work from the Planetary Praxis research group and Smart Forests project as part of this “Social and Political Sciences at Two Degrees” event at the University of Glasgow as part of the “Future Directions” series.

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23/05/2025

MSCA lunchtime conversation - Human-AI Co-creation

Jennifer Gabrys participated in the MSCA (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) lunchtime conversation - Human-AI Co-creation. Discussants considered the implications of different AI technologies across domains including health, environment, social media, labour, and critical infrastructures.

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22/05/2025

Smart Forests Knowledge Exchange Workshop

Phoebe Hamilton Jones and Jennifer Gabrys hosted a Smart Forests Knowledge Exchange Workshop at Cambridge Cottage, Kew Gardens, to discuss findings from the Community-led Forest Technologies interim report, and to foster dialogue among stakeholders in government, industry, community groups, and aligned fields. The event was made possible with funding from the ERC as part of the Smart Forests project; and from the Social Science Impact Fund, Research Strategy Office, University of Cambridge.

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06/05/2025

Smart Forests research story

The Smart Forests project is featured in the research stories by AHSS Research Funding and Strategic Initiatives, University of Cambridge. The feature highlights our key findings and proposals to inform policymaking.

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12/03/2025

Sensing a Planet on Fire and Listening with Forests

Jennifer Gabrys will give a presentation on a recent Smart Forests case study in Chile for the “Situating Architecture” lecture series at The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London (12 March 2025).

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18/02/2025

Community-led Forest Technologies: A Smart Forests Interim Report

The Community-led Forest Technologies interim report documents and analyzes the social and political impacts of digital technologies on forest communities across the globe. Drawing on four case studies and a survey of smart forest initiatives, the report reveals how these technologies can reshape environmental governance and influence how communities perceive and inhabit forest worlds. The report concludes with proposals on how these technologies can help create more just and thriving forest worlds.

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31/01/2025

From Citizen Data to Data Forests: Cultivating Environmental Data Practices

Jennifer Gabrys will give a keynote presentation as part of the “Meet the Editors”: Big Data & Society workshop, organized by the ERC-funded DATAUNION project, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium (30-31 January 2025).

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15/01/2025

Smart Forests film launch

The Smart Forests project film documents ongoing research into the increasing digitalization of forest environments. Developed as part of the ERC-funded Smart Forests project, the film shows how the rise of digital technologies for forest monitoring and governance can differently enable or constrain forest-dependent communities in locations worldwide. Covering research undertaken from 2020 onwards, it focuses on four in-depth case studies in Chile, Indonesia, the Netherlands, and India.

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19/11/2024

Sensing Air, Fire, Water, Earth

Jennifer Gabrys gives the keynote presentation, “Sensing Air, Fire, Water, Earth: How to Build Habitable Worlds with Citizen Technoscience,” for the launch of the CITEC Nucleo Milenio on citizen technoscience in Santiago, Chile.

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04/10/2024

Imagining Planetary Health, Well-Being, and Habitability

Jennifer Gabrys will deliver a keynote, “Composing Planetary Health in a World on Fire,” for the “Imagining Planetary Health, Well-Being, and Habitability” workshop at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. The event will explore the how the planetary and planetarities intersect with changing notions of health and liveable worlds.

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18/07/2024

Yuti Fatimah at EASST/4S

As part of the EASST/4S 2024 conference on Science, Technology & Society studies, taking place in Amsterdam from 16-19 July 2024, postdoc Yuti Fatimah will present a paper, “Unravelling the Complexities of Counterfactual World-Making in Carbon Offset Projects: A Case Study of Rimba Raya” co-authored with Jennifer Gabrys. This talk will be part of a panel on “Politics of Carbon Sinks. Knowledge, Institutions, and Shifting Understandings of the Environment.”

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16/07/2024

Michelle Westerlaken at EASST/4S

From 16-19 July 2024, postdoc Michelle Westerlaken will attend the EASST/4S conference in Amsterdam (NL) with a presentation titled “Simulating Biodiversity: The Digital Logics of Emerging Environmental Monitoring Technologies”. This talk will be part of a panel on “the improbable coalition of the “twin” green and digital transitions”.

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25/06/2024

Digital x Climate Summer Institute

Jennifer Gabrys will deliver a keynote, “AI x Digital Environmental Justice,” for the Digital x Climate Summer Institute at the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. The event will explore the multiple intersections of digital technologies and climate topics, including the environmental impact of digital devices.

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11/06/2024

Yuti Fatimah at Colonial Natures Conference

On 12 June 2024, Smart Forests postdoc Yuti Fatimah will discuss the multiplicity of carbon practices in her presentation, “Noticing the Forest: The Multiplicity of Conservation Practices in Bungo, Jambi (Indonesia),” at the Challenge of Conservation conference organized by the University of Cambridge.

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