The Forest Anthropology Working Group on Europe and Beyond (FORAGE) was established in August 2023 during the first meeting of the network at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, supported in part through a Canadian SSHRC Connection Award.

FORAGE brings together anthropologists and those using ethnographic or qualitative methods in the social sciences whose research touches on forests (restoration, afforestation, rewilding, plantations, disturbances etc.) in Europe and the Global North (broadly defined). Forests are increasingly, and often uncritically, invoked in public discourse and political documents as broad climate change and conservation solutions. Because of this, there are numerous researchers whose work is increasingly drawing them to consider the social and political shapes of forests and their implications.

In this context, FORAGE seeks to:

// engage the expertise of its members to achieve interdisciplinary, cross-national, and where possible, comparative insights on forest-society relations across Europe and the Global North;

// provide a platform for young and emerging scholars for international exchange and expanding research perspectives;

// aid its members in establishing an international network spanning various European contexts and settings;

// help its members envision, design, and plan research projects and proposals;

FORAGE aims to bring together disparate research projects working under the same umbrella: the ways in which forests are increasingly and uncritically politicized as unproblematic or relatively easy climate change solutions, biodiversity fixes, remedies for rural areas and development problems.

Click here to learn more about the coordinators of the network.