Christoph D. D. Rupprecht
ルプレヒト　クリストフ

I am a geographer working on cities and sustainability theory from the perspectives of food, agriculture, green space, degrowth, solarpunk and multispecies/more-than-human thinking. An Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental Design, Faculty of Collaborative Regional Innovation at Ehime University, I’m also a founding member and Director at the non-profit organization FEAST. The Multispecies Sustainability Lab was founded in 2021 as part of my move to Ehime University from the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature.

You can find me at Ehime University (in Japanese), on Mastodon/Twitter, ResearchGate (including CV), Researchmap, and Google Scholar, or veeery seldomly uploading my hobby nature photography.

地理学者として、都市や持続可能性の理論について食と農、緑地、脱成長、ソーラーパンクやマルチスピーシーズの観点から研究を行っています。愛媛大学社会共創学部環境デザイン学科・准教授のほか、一般社団法人FEASTの設立理事として活動しています。マルチスピーシーズ・サステナビリティ・ラボラトリーは2021年に総合地球環境学研究所から愛媛大学への移動のきっかけに設立されました。

より詳しくは愛媛大学のHP, Mastodon/Twitter, ResearchGate, Researchmap, Google Scholar やめったに更新しない写真撮影HPをご覧ください！

Ehime University seminar / 愛媛大学・ルプレヒトゼミ

Every year, the lab is hosting several undergraduate students of Ehime University’s Department of Environmental Design. Learn about past research topics and how to join the lab.

ラボでは毎年愛媛大学社会共創学部環境デザイン学科から3-4人程度のゼミ生を受け入れます：過去の卒業研究やラボ・ゼミに入ることについて！

Members & friends at large / メンバーと世界中の仲間

Wang Yi

Wang Yi is a Ph.D. student at Ehime University, majoring in Civil and Environmental Engineering. She previously worked as a landscape designer with a focus on biophilic design and participated in a wide range of urban landscape projects in China, including residential developments, mixed-use commercial complexes, urban wetland parks, and suburban pollinator gardens.

Building on her practical experience and industry insights, she emphasizes the integration of theory and practice. Her current research is dedicated to advancing theoretical approaches and applying urban data analysis to support the development of biodiverse and vibrant urban green spaces — with a particular interest in informal green spaces.
Her research aims to contribute to the enhancement of urban green infrastructure, promote urban sustainability, and improve human well-being.

Talandila Kasapila

Talandila Kasapila is a conservationist and sustainability science enthusiast specializing in natural resource management, development, and poverty alleviation. An MSc candidate at Ehime University in Japan, Talandila also serves as Park Manager for Lake Malawi National Park.

His research focuses on re-balancing preservation and development at UNESCO World Heritage Sites, addressing value conflicts and sustainability dilemmas. Collaborating with stakeholders in Yakushima (Japan), and Lake Malawi National Park (Malawi), his work seeks to find innovative solutions for transformative multispecies sustainability at these natural heritage sites. You can find him on LinkedIn.

Lihua Cui

Lihua Cui is a Researcher at the Tokyo Metropolitan Research Institute for Environmental Protection. She is a landscape architect who is keen on the link between historical landscape and sustainable urban environmental management. For many years, Cui has been focusing on the microclimate of Japanese gardens and comfortable urban green spaces. Her study interests also include people’s green space use, urban agriculture, and edible landscapes. When she is not working, she spends most of time in the nature, hiking, cycling, and swimming!

Feel free to check out my work at ResearchGate and posts on Instagram.

Kyle Thompson

Co-host of General Intellect Unit podcast, PhD candidate at Utrecht University on the Anticiplay project, author of Dragons and Travellers Tales RPG.

Maya Kovskaya / AMOR MUNDI

Maya Kóvskaya (PhD in Political Science at UC Berkeley, 2009) teaches Multispecies Anthropocene Studies; Post- humanist STS; Ecophilosophical, Political, Cultural, Visual Cultural Theory, and Peircian Semiotics at Chiang Mai University in the Faculty of Social Science. She has published widely on the intersection of the political, cultural, and ecological with semiotics, performative and visual culture, and the Anthropocene condition. She heads the multidisciplinary Multispecies Ecological Worldmaking Lab at CMU. Current research entails rethinking the human in a more-than-human world towards conceptualizing a “politics beyond the human and a multispecies polity.” She examines etiologies of the “Anthroposupremocene” in the philosophical underpinnings and workings of the invidious, hierarchical division between humans and the more-than-human world that accompanied the historical, contingent, constitutive species-rupturing alienation of Western Humanist “Man/Anthropos” from “Nature.” Current field research includes a collaborative multispecies project on viral, human, and elephant entanglements in Northern Thailand, and a collaboration with a marine biologist in the Gulf of Thailand on climate change, human disturbance, biodiversity loss, extinction, multispecies ecological niche co-creation, trophic cascades, and eco-semiosis in coral reefs.

You can find Maya at Academia.edu, Chiang Mai University and ResearchGate, and of course the AMOR MUNDI Multispecies Ecological Worldmaking Lab.

Chris Berthelsen

Chris Berthelsen is based at Ehime University and Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa – formerly known as Auckland, New Zealand. He explores environments for creative activity, resident-led modification of the everyday environment, and alternative education(s). He is a co-founder of Activities and Research in Environments for Creativity Trust (Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa) and Tanushimaru Institute for Art Research (Fukuoka, Japan).

You can find him at http://small-workshop.info and http://a-small-lab.com.

Astrid Mangnus

I am a researcher working at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, following a postdoc on creative practices aimed at sustainability transformations in the H2020 CreaTures project, a kindred spirit of the Multispecies Sustainability Lab. In my PhD, I explored the use of various experimental ways to think about and act on sustainable futures. I am still fascinated with breaking through sustainability deadlocks with art, play, community organization and radically new ways of thinking.
You can find my work at ResearchGate. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

Ayako Kawai

I am a human ecologist and associate professor at Kagawa University. My research focuses on sustainable human-nonhuman relationships, especially on crop diversity and plant breeding. My interest also includes multispecies thinking and post-capitalist possibilities.

You can find me at ResearchGate.

The FEAST NPO team / 一社FEAST

Our lab is best friends with the FEAST NPO and it’s team!

Former lab members

Dr Minseo Kim

Before this lab was founded in 2021, Dr Kim graduated from Chiba University in 2019 under the co-supervision of Christoph Rupprecht with a thesis combining ecological and social analysis of informal greenspaces in Ichikawa City.