RURALEX is a three-year research project that studies the cumulative crisis of environmental expertise across Europe’s rural areas. We are a team of researchers and practitioners investigating how shifts in people’s knowledge about the environment shape social, cultural, and ecological challenges facing local communities today.
A collaborative project investigating contemporary rural experiences, infrastructures and narratives through situated research.
Across Europe, rural regions are undergoing major transformations. Population decline, urban migration, and the loss of traditional agricultural practices have disrupted long-standing relationships between people and their environments. This is leading to many forms of ecological know-how transforming, fading, and being generated. Our research spans diverse sites, from the Spanish Pyrenees to southeastern England, from the Bulgarian Danube basin to the northern cost of Norway. Using long-term ethnographic and archival methods, we document how environmental knowledge evolves across generations and landscapes. We also develop innovative tools to capture stories, sounds, and images that reflect how people relate to their environments. We hope to show how better understanding local knowledge can help address Europe’s pressing ecological and social challenges — and why the humanities are essential to understanding our shared future.
Bureaucratic forest management marginalizes traditional knowledge. As climate change raises the threat of megafires, this project uses ethnographic fieldwork to explore and identify alternative ways to build fire-resilient landscapes and communities.
Socialist Romania and Bulgaria introduced Asian carp as a protein source. It escaped into the Danube, becoming an invasive species. We examine fish reproduction and infrastructure, tracking how neoliberal reforms reshape interspecies relations.
Agricultural and environmental practices in Mallorca are changing and so are broader political and social debates. This case study explores resilience and adaptation in labour, trade, and livelihoods, while documenting past agricultural systems and landscapes.
Abandonment of traditional agriculture, depopulation, and rewilding have turned the landscape into a site of political contention. These transformations spark conflict as local actors negotiate shifting land use and identities.
Reed beds and flooded meadows along the Kasari River support major Arctic bird migration and foster artisanal innovations. Biodiversity conservation, cultural tradition, and economic viability are negotiated, revealing tensions and adaptations in managing this distinctive landscape and its livelihoods.
At Knepp, grazing and beaver reintroduction are shaping new wetlands, raising questions about how social values guide future licensing. At Railway Land Wildlife Trust, Lewes, chalk stream restoration created biodiverse wetlands and fosters ecocentric cultures.
Short description of context under 50 words, avoiding phrases like "we examine..."
Short description of context under 50 words, avoiding phrases like "we examine..."
Core project team and collaborators.
The RURALEX team has begun a new phase of fieldwork in a northern fishing village, focusing on seasonal work, tourism and changing marine environments. Interviews, recordings and visual material will be added to the site over the coming months. [under construction]
Local residents, artists and researchers gathered for a three-day workshop on media, archives and sound in forest settlements. [under construction]
A co-authored article drawing on RURALEX case studies will appear in an open-access journal later this year. [under construction]
For general inquiries about the project, collaborations, press or access to materials, please contact the team.
