By Humtech RITCs on March 9, 2026
What does it mean to be a “Bruin” in a world shared with oaks, hawks, and mycelium? Under the direction of Dr. Vetri Nathan (Associate Professor, European Languages and Transcultural Studies), the new Multispecies Futures Lab is answering this question by working at the productive contact-zone of the Digital, Environmental, and Multispecies Humanities.
Founded in 2024, the lab serves as a collaborative space where scholars and students investigate the intricate connections between our digital lives and our ecological well-being through community-engaged research. This year, the lab’s mission gained crucial momentum through two HumTech Research and Instructional Technology Consultants (RITCs) for AY 2025–26.
Tech-Forward Research in Action
The DH Accelerator RITCs are providing valuable contributions to several core initiatives, demonstrating how the lab’s projects can both benefit from technical expertise and provide hands-on training for graduate and undergraduate research assistants. With future funding support, the lab can truly increase its role as a training lab for engaged work in the Environmental, Multispecies and Digital Humanities.
The Multispecies Bruins Map: This local initiative utilizes “thick-mapping” to visualize the UCLA campus as a site of multispecies co-becoming. Graduate student Emma Ridder, with mentorship from Dr. Wendy Kurtz, is spearheading the development of this interactive ArcGIS project, mentoring undergraduate RAs in the process of reimagining campus maps beyond a strictly human-centered perspective.
Global Scholarship & Open Access: The lab is preparing Dr. Nathan’s forthcoming book “Our Multispecies Futures” for publication. Researcher Emily Szipro has played a key role in securing permissions and preparing the manuscript for accessibility and broad public readership. This deliberately open-access project will serve as a foundational resource for the burgeoning field of transcultural Multispecies Studies.
Looking Forward
The success of these projects provides a roadmap for the lab’s ambitious future. With continued support, the Multispecies Futures Lab aims to sustain and scale several upcoming initiatives, including the creation of a new nomadic Multispecies Studies Global Institute, a new interdisciplinary Multispecies Studies Online GE/ELTS/DH course, and expanded research opportunities in the engaged humanities. Through this work, the lab seeks to cultivate more sustainable and inclusive ways of thinking about what it means to be a Bruin in a shared, multispecies world.
About the authors
Emily Szpiro is a RITC, and currently an English Ph.D. student at UCLA. Previously, she lived in Montreal, where she received her B.A. and M.A. at McGill University. She works predominantly with modernist authors such as Virgina Woolf, H.D., and Gertrude Stein to think about the porousness and sensitivity of the sick body at the intersection of its environment and, in doing so, explore the potential of the novel’s experimental aesthetics.
Emma Ridder is a RITC, and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at UCLA. Her research centers on twentieth-century literature and film, film theory and visual culture studies, and affect studies. She is working on a dissertation titled “Distasteful Sights: On Disgust and Film Form,” which examines cinematic elicitations and explorations of disgust that draw upon and underscore the hapticity of the medium.
Main image used under the permission of the artist.