While FORAGE seeks to think across disciplinary and national boundaries, ethnography is also a craft of thinking big questions through a careful engagement with highly specific contexts and practices. In our Understories, we feature conceptualization, reflection, and musings drawn from ethnographic encounters with forests worlds. If you want to contribute with your own writing – between 400 and 600 words – or other forms of output, including video of visual materials, please get in touch with the coordinators of FORAGE here.

What Does it Mean to Know a Forest? Reflections from the precipice of forest anthropology, by Aleksandra Grabowski In this post Aleksandra Grabowski explores their field work experiences in Białowieża Forest, Poland, asking how or if, a researcher can know the places they work. Dec 2025 Mapping Land Use Histories to Understand Forest Futures, by Jodie Asselin Those working in the forest industry in Ireland tell Jodie that Ireland needs to build a ‘forest culture’. But whose forest culture would that be – and how would that emerge? Read the post here. Nov 2025	Forests for an (Un)Certain Future, by Agata Konczal In this lecture, Agata Konczal explores how narratives of forest disasters embed specific worldviews, while probing their (often implicit) politics. Watch the video here!
Forestry as Horizoning Work, by Irene van Oorschot How do foresters envision the future, and is that even possible, given the intensification of global warming and associated threats to the forest? Read the post here.	‘Messy Forests’ and Wild Fire Risks in the Pyrenees, by Camila Del Mármol As wild fire risksare mounting throughout Mediterranean Europe, rural residents reflect critically on the environmental legislation that keeps them from ‘cleaning up’ their forests. Read the post here!