Land Body Ecologies

Invisible Flock, alongside partners, is the recipient of the Wellcome Trust’s renowned Hub Award, to run the transdisciplinary research group Land Body Ecologies. The grant provides a dynamic research space in the Wellcome Collection building at the heart of London, where people with different expertise can collaborate on projects exploring health, life and art.

Land Body Ecologies will undertake a two-year exploration that brings together a team of human rights activists, mental health researchers, expert communities, scientists, and artists to research the phenomenon of solastalgia. A developing field in global health, solastalgia is defined as the emotional or existential distress caused by environmental change, or commonly described as “the feeling of homesickness while you are still at home.” Through the lens of solastalgia, the project aims to understand the lived experiences of land trauma across land dependant and Indigenous communities.

The research is anchored within these communities through a live network of hubs in the Arctic, Kenya, Uganda, India, Thailand and the Uk. These hubs support the incorporation of local knowledge, perspectives, and lived experiences in the research, which is vital as the team aims to better understand the traumas endured when the lands and ecosystems suffer.