This text aims to place nonhuman animals at the core of urban space and history to provide an insight into the life and materiality of dogs in Stockholm 1824-1920. The theoretical possibilities of more-than-human enquiries into history are discussed along with non-human animals as historical beings together with humans creating a common history (Ingold 2000, Whatmore 2002). Moreover nonhuman animals are discussed and incorporated in an exploration into using what is here discussed as a multispecies narrative and used as an analytical tool to try to avoid the pitfalls of representationalism. It is also introduced as a possible new methodology to approaching the urban landscape within the field of environmental history. The main empirical material of dogs in nineteenth century Stockholm are records from the city dog pound along with records of dog tax and rabies. Other than archive material a wide range of material contemporary to the research period such as art, photography and literature is used as part of a broad exploration of nonhuman animals as integral in materiality of Stockholm and as historical beings. Findings of the study confirm that dogs and other nonhuman animals hugely impacted both the spatial structure and social space of Stockholm and that this impact transformed over the research period defined by societal changes. More specifically the study shows that dogs played an important role as free roaming scavengers and were for this reason accepted as an integral part of the city in the nineteenth century in Stockholm. Later in the research period when the city became more regulated this role started to change and dogs were not accepted loose on the streets to the same degree and transformed into pets and symbols of social mobility and class. Regarding the use of a multispecies narrative the conclusion that can be drawn form this thesis is that is opens up for discussions on the materiality of urban space and history.

Fully-dynamic, continuous fugacity-based fate and transport models have been developed to examine all natural processes and interactions in the aquatic water systems. Within a body of surface water such as a lake or a river, a dynamic interaction among different media takes place. Chemical compounds are continuously dissolving, adsorbing into solid particles, attaching to suspended particles, resuspending, reacting, diffusing, and advecting. As the inclusion of all these interactions into a model is complex, the use of fugacity concept instead of concentration, renders the modeling task relatively easy. Fugacity, which is described as the escaping tendency of a chemical from a medium, is continuous among different phases, thus easier to follow the movement of the chemical. The first model has been developed to be used as an emergency response model by decision makers, which models the fate and transport of any contaminant in a lake. Due to uncertainties involved in the analysis, Monte Carlo simulations are performed. The fate of three representative contaminants; polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), atrazine, and benzene in air, water, and sediment compartments are examined. The second model developed is a continuous, dynamic river fugacity-based water quality model. In order to develop a continuous model, the hydrodynamics of the river system is solved first. Water depth and velocity at each point along the river are used in the advection-dispersion equation to determine the fate and transport of a contaminant. Interactions between different phases are also incorporated into the advection-dispersion equation which is solved numerically and coupled with a mass balance equation derived for the same contaminant in the sediments. The third model is a multispecies contaminant fate and transport model which can be used for the fate of a single contaminant and its daughter products. Trichloroethylene (TCE) and its daughter products, dichloroethylene (DCE) and vinyl chloride (VC), are used as representative of multispecies contaminants. The fate and transport of TCE and its daughter products has been analyzed first in a lake environment, and then in a river environment with the addition of a biofilm compartment where all biotransformations take place.

I anslutning till det ökade vetenskapliga intresset för relationen djur – människa ämnar jag här undersöka varför många hästmänniskor söker sig informella kunskapsvägar, vägar som inte sällan står i strid med hegemoniska diskurser och maktstrukturer inom den svenska hästvärlden. Mina frågeställningar är följande: Hur ser den formella kunskapsvägen i Hästsverige ut och varför tycks det finnas ett motstånd mot denna? Hur ser motståndet ut? Vad är det man väljer bort? Vad söker man istället? Materialet består av intervjuer med människor som valt informella sätt att nå kunskap om hästar, författarens egna erfarenheter samt texter som behandlar den svenska hästvärlden i stort. Resultatet kan sammanfattas i att människor dras till de informella kunskapsvägarna därför att dessa i större utsträckning än de formella betraktar hästen som en individ vars vilja och agens förtjänar respekt och förståelse.

In Sweden there are around 400 service dogs and dog handlers within the police (Polisen,2016). The service dogs are used in 25 000 to 30 000 interventions every year. According to the Swedish Police Service (2016), the most common breed within the police in Sweden is German shepherds and Malinois. The service dogs are used to track down people, substances and objects. They can also be used for surveillance and defense (Polisen, 2016). According to Eneström (2015-06-18), the transportation cages for service dogs used within the Swedish police today are designed with smaller measurements than the ones required by the Swedish Board of Agriculture (2015). The reason why the smaller cages are used is that with the measurements stated in the regulations from the Swedish Board of Agriculture, two cages cannot fit into the luggage compartment of the currently used police patrol vehicles (Eneström,2015-06-18). Fortunately, the vehicle Volvo XC70, which is the most commonly used police patrol vehicle, will not be manufactured anymore. This means that a new vehicle have to be chosen touse both for regular patrol vehicles and for dog transportation patrol vehicles. The need of a new solution for transporting service dogs initiated this master thesis, which was initiated by the design company Dacat AB. The aim was to develop a solution for the cages and storage of equipment integrated in a new vehicle of suggestion for the police. The objective was that this new solution should be developed with the user in center, meet the regulations and legislations from stakeholders, obtain high usability, enhance the user experience and provide a healthy, comfortable working environment for both police dogs and the police officers. The outcome of the thesis is visualizations and animations made from 3D models describing the conceptual solution. A user centered design approach was used in this thesis since the target group is narrow and itwas important to understand the context and the target group well. The user centered approach was adapted to fit the design challenge of this thesis, especially to make it work with the fact that the target group consists of both a human and a dog. This lead to an approach and a process, in this thesis called Design for multi-species partnerships. The result consists of a vehicle recommendation with a technical solution for the interior design. It is constructed to fit the recommended vehicle, but also to be adapted to other vehicles, depending on which vehicle the police decide to choose. The interior design is beneficial for both the dogs and the dog handlers as well as for the complete police operations, since it creates a more viable and versatile vehicle for the police. It was important to fulfill the needs and desires of both parts of the target group as well as creating a well functioning solution that works efficiently. The police patrol vehicle is in fact a working place for the target group, which means that aspects not that important to other vehicle users, was shown to be important in this thesis. This because the working place environment is directly connected to health and the ability to perform well. The profession of the target group is important for the society and is filled with a lot of expectations and demands, therefore it is important that the working place environment offer them the possibility to perform well without interference. The master thesis is carried out during the last semester of the Industrial Design Engineerprogram at Luleå University of Technology. The course D7014A is 30 university credits which equals 20 weeks of fulltime work. The thesis was conducted in Gothenburg in the spring of 2017.

Through critical urban spatial intervention and close attention to multispecies relationality, this project report documents the designerly exploration of a ‘plats-specifik’ (place-specific) ontology of becoming through polyvocal authorship, sticking with the trouble of anthropocentric urban development and temporalities of change. ‘JAG ÄR DU’ is a triad composition of trellises that grow scarlet runner beans, giving an architectural frame for the beans to grow into a hybrid typography and co-authored speculative poetics. Two metres tall and one and a half meters wide, each letter is built with vestigial matters of the past and present. Placed in a newly regenerated meadow in the northern parts of central Växjö, the intervention invites curiosity, reflection and abundant meetings between diverse thought worlds, species and generations of inhabitants. As a ‘plats-specifik’ project, this work demonstrates ways to make collective, public, and critical connections to placeness; the thick, implicated and multisensorial. It is to intervene in capatriarchalonialist (capitalist, patriarchal and colonialist ideological) politics of urban space, and to offer an alternative imaginary to the ways we see ourselves participating in the performing and making of multispecies publics.

No description available.

In the current climate crisis, creating a symbiotic collaboration between all members of an ecosystem has become a prominent topic. By reevaluating human-centered methodologies through a cultural probe and an orienting activity, I address notions of collaboration, cohabitation and extending one’s body beyond the skin. I explore the concept of care in human-plant relationships, along with understanding the trouble with designing for and with care in the context of human-nature-technology kinship. The cultural probe, through its ambiguity, has prompted reflections on care and multispecies kinship, whereas the orienting activity has been an attempt to potentially shift to a non-anthropocentric perspective. A materialization of speculative thinking, these activities are a first step in challenging human exceptionalism, a new approach to viewing the human as decentered in design. This paper positions care as a premise in addressing human-centered methodologies to include non-human actors, with prototypes and speculative design as techniques that facilitate approaching a challenging and complex topic as one of more-than-human assemblages. / I den nuvarande klimatkrisen har skapandet av symbiotiska sammarbeten mellan alla deltagare av ett ekosystem blivit ett viktigt ämne. Genom att omvärdera människocentrerade metodiker genom en cultural probe och en orienterande aktivitet adresserar jag idéer om sammarbete, samlevnad och förlängningen av ens kropp bortom huden. Jag utforskar konceptet handomtagande i människo-plant-relationer tillsammans med förståelsen för mödorna med att designa för och med handomtagande i kontexten människa-natur-teknologi-släktskap. En cultural probe har genom dess tvetydighet drivit reflektioner kring handomtagande och mångfaldsläktskap, där den orienterade aktiviteten var ett försök till ett potentiellt shifte till ett icke-antropocentriskt perspektiv. Dessa aktiviteter, som är material från spekulativt tänkade, är ett tillvägagångasätt och första steg i att utmana människocenterad exceptionalism i design. Denna artikel positionerar handomtagande som en premiss i adresserandet av människocentrerade metodiker till att inkludera icke-mänskliga aktörer genom användandet av prototyper och spekulativ design som underlättande tekniker till utmaningar och komplexa ämnen som mer-än-mänskliga församlingar.

This thesis focuses on the interspecies relationships of care in the Hambach Forest, Germany. It covers the caring relations between the human activists protecting the Forest by occupying it and the trees growing there. The text covers the affectionate dimension of the activists’ caring relation towards the trees as well as how the caring manifested in their attentiveness and actions. Apart from the traditional ethnographic methods, the research is rooted in multispecies methodology, particularly plant ethnography. As primary theoretical frameworks, the concepts of more-than human sociality and world-making by Anna Tsing were used, as well as the understanding of the interspecies ethics of care by Puig de la Bellacasa. The analysis shows that the caring relationship of the activists was often rooted in the situated relationality that emerges from particular relations with particular trees or other nonhumans. As a navigating tool, activists sometimes used also the nature-culture dichotomy, and sometimes they, on the contrary, contested it. I show that relationships of care were mutual and occurred in the direction from activists to the trees but also that the trees and Forest took care of many activists’ needs. I also demonstrate how the trees and other nonhumans actively participated in the processes of co-creating the more-than-human sociality in the Forest. The analysis shows that the activists’ behaviour was not always coherent or determined by the same values but was often ambivalent and changing depending on the situation.

Le terme « agriculture urbaine » renvoie à une diversité de « pratiques agricoles individuelles ou collectives qui se déroulent au sein même de la ville » (Mundler et coll., 2014). Bien que le sujet ait déjà généré beaucoup d’intérêt académique, ce mémoire vise à offrir une perspective novatrice, centrée sur les changements ontologiques qui se produisent chez les jardiniers tels que rapportés dans leurs témoignages alors qu’ils s’engagent pratiquement et affectivement avec les plantes qu’ils et elles cultivent. De cet engagement résulte la participation des jardiniers.ères à un réseau de relations multiespèces impliquant tous les insectes, animaux, champignons et microbes qui interagissent avec leurs plantes. Je décris ainsi comment les jardiniers.ères en viennent à développer des liens avec toutes ces espèces fourmillantes et à s’engager pour qu’elles prospèrent. Finalement, cet engagement les fait réévaluer comment ils désirent prendre une place comme humains dans ce collectif multiespèces et ils et elles en viennent à repenser le social sur le modèle permaculturel inspiré du jardin pour imaginer une « permaculture humaine », une nouvelle manière d’envisager le lien social et l’existence humaine et urbaine. / The term “urban agriculture” refers to a diversity of “individual and collective agricultural practices taking place within a city” (Mundler et al., 2014, free translation). This subject has been the interest of much discourse in the academic as well as the public sphere, as we hear more and more about a “greening of cities” that is coming about with increasing temperatures, drought, fresh food scarcity and loss of biodiversity in and around cities. This dissertation aims to offer a novel perspective on the subject of urban gardening, inspired by literature around ontologies and multispecies sociability. In my interviews of different urban gardeners involved in the production of food in cities around the province of Quebec, I highlight how these gardeners’ perspectives—and, more fundamentally, their world vision—become transformed as they entangle themselves in the network of multispecies living taking place in and around the garden. As their understanding of other species in the garden are transformed, so are their perspective of themselves as humans and their knowing of their place in the garden-and more generally, on our planet. Their practice of care, attention and responsibility for their other-than-human counterparts in the garden also allows them to rethink the politics of their occupation of urban space and food production more generally, as they propose we move towards a “human permaculture”.

Phylogenetics is the research of ancestor-descendant relationships among different groups of organisms, for example, species or populations of interest. The datasets involved are usually sequence alignments of various subsets of taxa for various genes. A major task of phylogenetics is often to combine estimated gene trees from many loci sampled from the genes into an overall estimate species tree topology. Eventually, one can construct the tree of life that depicts the ancestor-descendant relationships for all known species around the world. If there is missing data or incomplete sampling in the datasets, then supertree methods can be used to assemble gene trees with different subsets of taxa into an estimated overall species tree topology. In this study, we assume that gene tree discordance is solely due to incomplete lineage sorting under the multispecies coalescent model (Degnan and Rosenberg, 2009). If there is missing data or incomplete sampling in the datasets, then supertree methods can be used to assemble gene trees with different subsets of taxa into an estimated species tree topology. In addition, we examine the performance of the most commonly used supertree method (Wilkinson et al., 2009), namely matrix representation with parsimony (MRP), to explore its statistical properties in this setting. In particular, we show that MRP is not statistically consistent. That is, an estimated species tree topology other than the true species tree topology is more likely to be returned by MRP as the number of gene trees increases. For some situations, using longer branch lengths, randomly deleting taxa or even introducing mutation can improve the performance of MRP so that the matching species tree topology is recovered more often. In conclusion, MRP is a supertree method that is able to handle large amounts of conflict in the input gene trees. However, MRP is not statistically consistent, when using gene trees arise from the multispecies coalescent model to estimate species trees.