Marina Pliushchik

I am a doctoral researcher, interested in human-animal relationships as they unfold in formal and informal educational settings. My research trajectory so far has spanned dog-assisted interventions and ecological citizen science. Broadly speaking, my research draws on scholarship in the fields of environmental humanities and multispecies studies, and, to a lesser extent, science and technology studies (STS).

My PhD thesis is preliminarily titled Complicating Matters: Killing Insects in an Ecological Citizen Science Project. In it, I explore the material and affective dimensions of education and learning in citizen science by asking what participants are invited to accept as normal when they engage in such projects. Ultimately, I argue that education in citizen science could have a larger role than knowledge transmission and assessment. Instead, it can provide a space for ethical inquiry, critical reflection, and multispecies response-ability, where participants, beyond scientific facts, learn how to stay with the trouble of what those facts demand. The thesis is part of Fellow Feelings – Co-creating biodiverse communities with young people, science, and bioart (Eudaimonia Institute, 2022-2025), which was led by Principal Investigator Professor Pauliina Rautio.

I am a member of the AniMate research group that explores how human existence and the definition of humanity are shaped through relationships with other animals. Read more about the group here. I am also an affiliated member of the University of Oulu’s research programme Biodiverse Anthropocenes.