A Field From Afar
writing, photography
with thanks to: IWM, EnvHistUA Research Group, Oxford Ukraine Hub, Solomiya, Ukrainian Environmental Humanities Network
2024-ongoing
“A Field from Afar” investigates the environmental history and political ecology of central Ukraine’s landscapes, from the 1880s until the present. My main companion in this is rapeseed. Drawing on archival land use records, trade statistics, agricultural reports, walking in the field, speaking to the farmers, writing ethnography, tracing grain and capital movements, noticing who else inhabits Ukraine’s fields and their margins, my research examines how trans-imperial, capitalist and multispecies relations shape central Ukraine’s landscapes.
Rapeseed, a top export crop primarily cultivated for EU biodiesel, is my companion in exploring how the worms, the crops, the farmers, the agro-oligarchs, financial institutions and others make and unmake the webs of life. Rapeseed’s monocropping perpetuates land degradation, offering a glimpse of how Ukraine’s implicated into global agrilogistics and shedding light on the longue durée of exploitation beyond the ongoing war.
Rapeseed is the third plant I’ve been working with to pay close attention to the sprawling ecologies and economies of human-environmental relations. The first stage of this research has been kindly supported by the IWM.
Rapeseed, a top export crop primarily cultivated for EU biodiesel, is my companion in exploring how the worms, the crops, the farmers, the agro-oligarchs, financial institutions and others make and unmake the webs of life. Rapeseed’s monocropping perpetuates land degradation, offering a glimpse of how Ukraine’s implicated into global agrilogistics and shedding light on the longue durée of exploitation beyond the ongoing war.
Rapeseed is the third plant I’ve been working with to pay close attention to the sprawling ecologies and economies of human-environmental relations. The first stage of this research has been kindly supported by the IWM.
A Field From Afar — photography, 2024-ongoing
A Landscape, Simplified — essay in Solomiya, no. 4 “Environmental Issue”, 2025
A Landscape, Simplified — panel presentation, Oxford Ukraine Hub, Oxford University, 2025
A Greasy Frontier, an Ouroboros of Oil — panel presentation, History is Not an Accident, RUTA, 2025
A Landscape, Simplified — essay in Solomiya, no. 4 “Environmental Issue”, 2025
A Landscape, Simplified — panel presentation, Oxford Ukraine Hub, Oxford University, 2025
A Greasy Frontier, an Ouroboros of Oil — panel presentation, History is Not an Accident, RUTA, 2025
Something happens, somewhere: bees, blame and responsibility in Ukraine’s rapeseed fields
—
essay, Eurozine,
also available on
the
Green European Journal, 2024
Breaking Bread: weaponized landscapes in Ukraine — interview, Lina Bondarenko, Nina Dyrenko and Iryna Zamuruieva discuss the weaponisation of nature and the cultivated landscape itself in Ukraine, from bread basket to fuel tank; KoozArch
A Field From Afar — panel presentation, Between the Local and the Global: Unpacking Environmental History of Ukraine, Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2024
Nature as Weapon — panel presentation, The Tbilisi Architecture Biennial , Tbilisi, 2024
Climate change between war and agriculture — panel presentation at the Violence fast and slow: war, colonialism and climate change, Intersections of the Peripheries Conference, Commons Journal, 2024
What we Gather — colloquium presentation, IWM, 2024
Land after War — essay, IWMpost 133 “False Prophets, False Promises”, 2024
Green European Journal, 2024
Breaking Bread: weaponized landscapes in Ukraine — interview, Lina Bondarenko, Nina Dyrenko and Iryna Zamuruieva discuss the weaponisation of nature and the cultivated landscape itself in Ukraine, from bread basket to fuel tank; KoozArch
A Field From Afar — panel presentation, Between the Local and the Global: Unpacking Environmental History of Ukraine, Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia, Bulgaria, 2024
Nature as Weapon — panel presentation, The Tbilisi Architecture Biennial , Tbilisi, 2024
Climate change between war and agriculture — panel presentation at the Violence fast and slow: war, colonialism and climate change, Intersections of the Peripheries Conference, Commons Journal, 2024
What we Gather — colloquium presentation, IWM, 2024
Land after War — essay, IWMpost 133 “False Prophets, False Promises”, 2024