
Dr. Kirksey is perhaps best known for his work in multispecies ethnography—a field that mixes ethnographic, historical, ethological, and genetic methods to study spaces where humans and other species meet. He first entered this field as an editor and curator. “The Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography,” a special issue of Cultural Anthropology co-edited with Stefan Helmreich, situates contemporary scholarship on animals, microbes, plants, and fungi within deeply rooted traditions of environmental anthropology, continental philosophy, and the sociology of science. Collaborations with bioartists, who work with living matter as their media, produced The Multispecies Salon, an art exhibit and edited book which brought together insights from the humanities on the microbiome, health, food, environmental justice, and synthetic biology.
http://www.multispecies-salon.org/