Corals, Bivalves and Other Invertebrates:
More-than-human Socialities in a Changing Ocean

Wednesday, 13th of May 2026, 12.00-19.00
Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (Room 1632-212)

Filter-feeding animals with hard, calcium carbonate exoskeletons of their own making, stony corals and bivalves (which include oysters, clams, and mussels) face some of the same problems in an increasingly acidic and warming ocean. At the same time, corals and bivalves are critical keystone species in the ecosystems in which they live and a vital source of both food and food for thought for the people who depend on them on the coastlines of the Anthropocene.  

Corals, bivalves, and other invertebrates constitute more than 90 % of all animal species in the ocean. And yet they have been largely sidelined in multispecies studies of the sea that have tended to focus on fish, whales, and other vertebrates.  Mending this gap, the workshop will chart the outline of an “invertebrate anthropology” by presenting a range of more-than-human ethnographies of the diverse material and ethereal relations between humans and invertebrates of the sea at a time when climate change, agro-chemical run-offs, plastic pollution, and ocean acidification are drastically changing living conditions for both vertebrate and invertebrate forms of life.  

Confirmed participants:
Anna Tsing (AU and UCSC)
Emanuela Borgnino (University of Torino)
Heather Swanson (AU)
Johanne Methmann Targaard (AU)
Fine Brendtner (AU)
Shuhei Tashiro (AU)
Nils Bubandt (AU)