More-than-human research: Being with as onto-epistemological method

Abstract

The increasing recognition of human entanglement with nonhuman agents, including animals, plants, natural entities, artefacts, and digital technologies, calls for new methodological approaches in qualitative research. This research note introduces being with as a research method. Inspired by Indigenous epistemologies and multispecies ethnography, being with entails a meditative state that opens up spaces for the perception of nonhuman presence. Instead of rationalizing, categorizing, and classifying nonhuman behaviour, being with redirects attention to the more-than-human transformations of human researchers. Bringing together a wide range of existing more-than-human research practices, this text illustrates the many forms being with a variety of nonhuman agents can take. It then examines the question of what being with means for data analysis and the writing process, which are taking place in the research assemblage involving the participation of data, technologies, and text.

Introduction

The recognition that humans are surrounded and entangled with nonhuman ¹ agencies and forces is increasingly taking hold across the social sciences and humanities (Grusin, 2015). The methodological consequences of what has been termed the ‘nonhuman condition’ (Asenbaum et al., 2023) inspire a lively debate about empirical approaches apt to make sense of more-than-human worlds (Adams and Thompson, 2016; Bastian, 2017; Herbrechter et al., 2022: Chapters 22–30; van Dooren et al., 2016). First steps towards developing more-than-human methodologies have been taken in geography (Buller, 2015; Miele and Bear, 2023), sociology (Charles et al., 2024), anthropology (Kirksey and Helmreich, 2010; Kohn, 2013), psychology (Lapina and Grum, 2025), and philosophy (Marder, 2013), to name a few. Empirical engagements with the more-than-human involve not only analysing, but also researching with nonhumans as diverse as rivers, plants, fungi, microbes, animals, artefacts, and digital technologies. More-than-human research departs from established research methods with their inbuilt anthropocentric assumptions which understand nonhumans as resources or tools rather than as active participants. Hence, approaches to more-than-human research entail an inherent democratic dimension and thus speak to participatory research methods and engaged theorizing, which aim to empower research participants as agentic knowledge creators (Ackerly et al., 2024; Asenbaum 2022; Asenbaum et al. 2025).

This research note introduces being with as onto-epistemological approach to more-than-human research. It turns the established logic around. Instead of asking how nonhumans can be incorporated into human-led research, I suggest starting from an understanding of our own entanglement with and pervasion by nonhumans: ‘The nonhuman turn… insists (to paraphrase Latour) that “we have never been human” but that the human has always coevolved, coexisted, or collaborated with the nonhuman – and that the human is characterized precisely by this indistinction from the nonhuman’ (Grusin, 2015: ix–x). The methodological consequences of this realization are fundamental. Rather than studying nonhumans, we need to study our own more-than-human selves. Understanding humans as hybrid human–nonhuman assemblages opens up space for the realization of our more-than-human transformations.

Being with is composed of two elements: being as ontological condition and with as connective engagement. Being draws on the one core feature all humans and nonhumans have in common: corporeal existence (Buller, 2015: 378; Charles et al., 2024). What humans share with rabbits, trees, mushrooms, lakes, books, and smartphones is embodied presence in time and space. Building a methodological approach from this commonality, my recommendation is that human-led research should start from simply being with nonhumans. Instead of excavating, testing, and interrogating, we are simply there. Being with, then, constitutes an ontological approach to epistemology. It enables knowing through being.

With as connective engagement foregrounds our ‘co-being’ across human–nonhuman boundaries. It constitutes more than a simple preposition, instead signifying a democratic ethos of connectivity, equality, and care. By focusing on the commonality of our ontological status of corporeal being, humans (who are always more-than-human) equalize the relationship with nonhuman participants and enact democratic equality. The connective ‘with’ also conveys sociality and signifies companionship through care (Haraway, 2008; Tsing, 2012). Companionship across difference is grounded in respect, humility, and the recognition of diversity. The openness necessary for being with demands the humility of admitting a lack of knowledge, even attempting not to know, since the certainty of knowledge may foreclose affective perceptibility. The equalizing moment of companionship shifts the established research focus from the human as actor to the human being acted upon by nonhuman others. Companionship is central to being with not only because of its connective qualities but also due to its ontological character. It is not primarily defined by interaction but by simply being there, being together. Companions can appreciate one another's presence in silence, in the quiet act of simply being with.

Being with builds on several emerging research practices in the field of more-than-human research and further develops them. It is inspired by Indigenous research methods that explore connectivities with natural entities (Hughes and Barlo, 2021). Indigenous research advances ‘fieldwork that immerses the researcher in the contexts of the Entities and to watch, listen, wait, learn’ (Martin and Mirraboopa, 2003: 213). Moreover, being with draws on multispecies ethnography (Kirksey and Helmreich, 2010), which foregrounds embodied presence in the field and immersion in more-than-human realities. The proposed method learns from these experiences and extends their logics by actively suspending the foreclosing tendencies of rationalization, judgement, and criticality. Rather than forcing impressions, being with means resting, waiting, and letting them come. Importantly, this entails a shift from established research modes that focus on analysis and classification to an active suspension of such forms of closure. Being as an ontological stance precedes cognition and intellectual reflection. Keeping this space open engenders possibilities for attuning to nonhumans (Despret, 2013) and hence experiencing connectivity.

Being with directs our attention towards our multiple and more-than-human selves. It draws inspiration from Donna Haraway's (2016) notion of sympoieses. Derived from the Greek ‘making with’, sympoeisis embraces more-than-human entanglement through tentacular thinking. Rather than analysing, judging, naming, and counting, being with entails a slow process of multisensory engagement which is not limited to sensing the other, but also sensing one's own transformability through encounter: ‘we require each other in unexpected collaborations and combinations, in hot compost poles. We become with each other or not at all’ (Haraway, 2016: 2). To redirect our human gaze from othering the nonhuman, being with invites us into a meditative state of self-observation that opens us up to experiencing our own nonhumanness. By actively attending to the body, breath, blood flow, and heartbeat, being with clears the mind, shifting our cognitive focus from verbal thinking to precognitive affectivity and sensory experientiality. This approach, then, requires autoethnographic sensibilities, but goes beyond established approaches, by tuning into our visceral responses and ever-changing bodily composition of blood flows, circulating hormones, neural connections, and microbial activity (Fishel, 2017).

Being with may take different forms depending on context and the nonhuman research participants. Being with a thunderstorm undoubtedly takes a different form than being with a dog or a smartphone. The following sections elaborate on this varied practices. Within a research project, being with can serve several functions. First, it may operate as the primary research method, particularly when engaging with nonhuman participants that humans perceive as less responsive, such as plants, mountains, snow or buildings. In this mode, being with will involve taking time to just be, share space, self-observe, and discover affective connections. Second, being with can constitute one element within a broader methodology. As a step in a larger research design, it opens spaces for affective connectivity that may precede more active research modes entailing judgement and critique. This approach can be especially useful when engaging with nonhuman animals, artefacts, or technology. Third, being with can serve as foundational research orientation that underpins the entire research process. In this case, human researchers may switch fluidly between more passive modes of opening and attuning, and active modes of analysis, questioning, and critique.

In what follows, I will briefly scope various approaches in more-than-human research with diverse nonhuman agents that shed further light on what being with might entail in practice. Then, I will turn to questions of being with nonhumans during data analysis and the writing process, before concluding with final reflections.

Being with nonhuman research participants

Being with takes inspiration from various emerging approaches in more-than-human research, which vary across different nonhuman groups. To engage with plants as research participants, Michael Marder (2013) suggests turning to plant being. Plants live in their own reality. ‘Whenever human beings encounter plants, two or more worlds (and temporalities) intersect’ (Marder, 2013: 8). Humans cannot simply access plant worlds. They can, however, approximate them by ‘brush[ing] upon the edges of their being’ (Marder, 2013: 13). This approximation may occur through ‘engaged witnessing’ (Bell et al., 2018). Engaged witnessing is inspired by Indigenous Dadirri practices which consist of non-intrusive and non-judgemental watching and deep listening. It is a co-constitutive process in which all participants take the role of witnesses and requires ‘opening up the human body to being more aware of the influence of nonhumans and becoming vulnerable to where this takes us’ (Bell et al., 2018: 138). In being with an angophora tree, the author describes a process of co-becoming:

I became-witness with the angophora through being there with them, touching them, smelling them, seeing them and hearing them. I spent time with a cluster of angophora with my eyes closed, focusing on what I could smell and hear. I felt the bark of the angophora, I hugged the trees, and put my ear up to them to hear the creaks vibrating through the trunks. (Bell et al., 2018: 142, emphasis added)

The humility, which is essential to being with, can be realized by entering into an apprenticeship with nonhumans. Human researchers can flatten hierarchies by ‘perceiving land and more-than-human others as teachers, approaching them with humility and awareness of our limitations, while also practicing reciprocity’ (Lapina and Grum, 2025: 317). Acknowledging plants as the experts from which humans can learn allows the formation of human–nonhuman communities of practice. Being with plays a crucial role in more-than-human apprenticeship: ‘we learn with plants by being with them, by increasing proximity to them through interactive relationships’ (Pitt, 2017: 98, emphasis added). Attuning oneself to plant agency also opens up possibilities for companionship. Plants are, by nature, companion species, as Tsing (2012) illustrates through mushrooms’ social interactions with trees, soil, and rocks. What, then, might it mean for humans to cultivate companion relationships with plants? In an ethnographic study of vines, Anna Krzywoszynska describes her being with a vine as sensually open enchantment, which ‘meant developing new ways of feeling and being with the plants’ (Krzywoszynska, 2017: 133, emphasis added). Allowing for enchantment requires an open state of wonder, which makes plant agency perceptible: ‘The sensual enjoyment opened up something in me; the vines touched me in a new way and demanded my attention’ (Krzywoszynska, 2017: 131). Rather than analysing the other, then, being with entails reflexive self-observation.

In contrast to plants, the quicker movement and detachment from the ground of nonhuman animals invite different ways of being with. What the approach consistently requires, however, is a focus on embodied affect and precognitive experiencing. Gary Steiner (2023) argues that humans and other animals share this stage of perception prior to rational thinking. He advances the notion of ‘letting beings be’, which does not mean leaving animals alone, but allowing them to be their true selves. Being with nonhuman animals may occur by entering contact zones which enable companion species to form friendships and loving relations of care (Haraway, 2008). Take as an example the ‘humandog collective’ Timothy Hodgetts and Hester (2017), who enter a forest to survey pine martens. The years of being with each other have shaped this collective through mutual attunement. This does not happen through conscious cognitive observation but through embodied empathy, which entails ‘feeling/seeing/thinking bodies that undo and redo each other’ (Despret, 2013: 51). By attuning to each other, Hodgetts and Hester form a human–nonhuman assemblage: ‘The dog crouches; the human's muscle tense. The human sees movement and holds still, looking; the dog pricks her ears, tilts her head’ (Hodgetts and Hester, 2017: 84).

In contrast to established research methods that rely primarily on judgement and classification, being with enables deeper insights on an affective and experiential, rather than a rational, level. Reflecting on being with a lizard, Bell et al. (2018: 140) write: ‘I was able to pay attention to things that I would have otherwise ignored, including the bodily comportments of human and animal bodies and how they became-witness together and influenced each other in ways that were felt rather than seen’.

We should be careful, however, not to romanticize human–nonhuman relations. Nonhuman animals may relate to humans as predators, plants as poisonous, thunderstorms as deadly, and technology as deceptive. Hence, more-than-human entanglements are not always, and presumably more often not, harmonious. Methodological consequences, then, include an openness to discomfort, fear, and anger as well as more cautious approaches to attunement from a distance, for instance, through the video documentation of animal geographies. Technology can assume the role of a mediator when cameras follow street dogs through Moscow (Turnbull and Searle, 2022) or a grizzly bear through a Canadian forest (Blue, 2016). In such examples, humans enter digitally mediated contact zones that enable learning from and attunement to wild animal life (Blue, 2016).

Moving beyond nonhuman animals, how might humans be able to research with natural entities? To do so, we must challenge Western individualism that underpins established research paradigms. In this regard, Lapina and Grum's (2025) method of moving-with multispecies ecologies is insightful. The authors propose: ‘the concept of “moving-with”[, which] insists on the frictional messiness of bodily worlding’ (318) as a method that is not simply about connecting one (human) entity with the (nonhuman) other. Rather than two bodies, it is entire ecologies, landscapes, and histories that interact, continuously remaking each other. Along these lines, Hughes and Barlo (2021) explore Australian Indigenous yarning with Country as a research method. In various Indigenous understandings, Country means more than land. It includes the waters, shadows, animals, sky, and plants (Dei et al., 2022). Yarning describes various Indigenous conversational modes among humans and between humans and nonhumans. Similar to Pitt's apprenticeship with plants, yarning acknowledges Country as the teacher. To enter into conversation with Country, one first must cultivate a readiness to listen. Sitting under she-oak trees by a pond, the authors ‘try to be a mirror of experience. We’re trying to settle enough of the internal egoistic chatter to be present to what's happening right now’ (Hughes and Barlo, 2021: 359).

The human–nonhuman author collective Bawaka Country et al. (2015) illustrate how Country can even become a co-author. Through caring relationships and deep listening, human and nonhuman agents co-become: ‘It is a matter of co-constitution. People, including researchers, are made through Country, they are part of Country and Country is part of them… Bawaka is a major author of our writing together differently. It writes us just as we are part of it and help write Bawaka’ (Bawaka Country et al., 2015: 274). Being with Country does not focus on knowing: ‘No human being can really understand all that a rock, a wind or a spear might tell us. These beings have their own ways of being and communicating. This is diversity beyond measure, beyond comprehension’ (Bawaka Country et al., 2015: 277). What it entails, in contrast, is a sense of reflective speculation. This point is also made in emerging approaches to non-representational ethnography which explore ‘the fleeting, viscous, lively, embodied, material, more-than-human, precognitive, non-discursive dimensions of spatially and temporally complex lifeworlds’ (Vannini, 2015: 2). Understanding what is usually framed as an inanimate background as a lively research participant involves accepting the limits of human knowledge: ‘vitalist ethnography, in short, is an ethnography pulled and pushed by a sense of wonder and awe with a world that is forever escaping, and yet seductively demanding, our comprehension’ (Vannini, 2015: 4).

Moving from natural entities to human-made artefacts further expands our understanding of the forms that being with can take. Here, companionship once again proves central. As with plants and nonhuman animals, companionship with artefacts entails simply being present, together, in an appreciative manner. It means opening up and attuning to formerly imperceptible affect. McLure's work illuminates the forms human-artefact companionship may take. Children often develop intimate relationships with artefacts through the extended periods of time they spend together. Think of a teddy bear, doll, or security blanket. These relationships emerge through sustained co-presence in shared space over time. Toys, comic books, and hair bands become intimate companions in a secret world in which adults are not allowed. These artefacts travel surreptitiously from home to school. In the classroom, they become seductive agitators that children struggle to resist (MacLure, 2013).

By being with artefacts, our personal ‘stuff’ becomes our companion. We enter into a co-constitutive relationship. As much as humans shape artefacts, artefacts shape humans: ‘Things and materials – as they come into being and are transformed through relations with other things and people – are an inextricable aspect of who we are, our social relations, and even our humanity’ (Woodward, 2019: 1). While our personal objects may become part of our everyday identities, others may pull us out of our conventional roles and encourage us to show other aspects of our multiple selves (Asenbaum, 2023; Khan et al., 2020).

Rather than examining the artefact itself, being with requires humans to observe their own responses to the pulls and pushes of materiality. In equalizing human–nonhuman relations, companionship draws attention to the ways humans are acted upon. This shifts object–subject relationships from human subjectivity towards objectivity – thereby inverting established hierarchies. As Sophie Woodward (2019: 17) observes ‘things are not passive, onto which humans assert their will or impose cultural meanings, but are instead a key player within which people's lives and worlds are mutually created’. Humans commonly perceive artefacts as incapable of self-movement and expression. Yet, objects are always in motion. Human senses are incapable of perceiving the thermal motion and vibrancy of atoms that compose and continuously recompose matter. Nor do humans easily perceive the profound changes artefacts undergo over time. Taking a step back, we can understand artefacts as temporal reifications of material flows, assemblages that come together, dissolve, and reconfiguring into new formations. What appears stable is only a fleeting configuration across time. Human bodies exist by the same principles, temporarily crystallizations of matter in continuous flux. The self-organizing mobility of artefacts has important consequences for being with. Rather than sitting alongside lifeless objects, being with artefacts entails a co-becoming at the transient intersection between human and artefactual flows.

Being with data in the research assemblage

Moving from being with nonhumans to analysis and writing entails a shift from a more open to a more active mode of cognition. Yet nonhuman agents always remain present. Technology, software, AI-powered research tools, and data itself can be understood as nonhuman research participants. Deborah Lupton (2018) contends that the personal digital data humans produce every day through their online engagement on social media and smartphone apps form companion species. By carrying our smart devices with us everywhere and through our sensory engagement with technologies, we co-evolve with data. For research, the emerging question then is: ‘what is this data doing in relation to this inquiry?’ (Timonen et al., 2018: 7).

If we consider data a nonhuman research participant, what might being with data look like as part of the analysis process? Instead of interrogating data, excavating meaning, measuring, and categorizing, being with data requires openness to let data speak. Maggie MacLure (2013) describes the experiential moments when data ‘grab’ researchers as a glow – an affective encounter between human body and the empirical other. To perceive this glow, human researchers need to forgo the quest for certainty and open up to wonder: ‘When I feel wonder, I have chosen something that has chosen me, and it is that mutual “affection” that constitutes “us” as, respectively, data and researcher’ (MacLure, 2013: 229). Wonder, and the perception of glow, is viscerally felt through human senses. Being with suggests a self-reflexive focus on the human researcher's somatic reactions, their body chemistry and temporary corporeal configuration through their engagement with data.

Beyond data, the entire research process encompasses a large variety of nonhuman agents. From the material research environments, desks, books, and notepads to computers, digital interfaces, and AI research tools, all these nonhuman agents are part of the research assemblage (Fox and Alldred, 2015; see also Asenbaum, 2022). While established approaches to research design tend to conceptualize the research process as a planned, stable input-output machinery, the acknowledgement of the agencies of all nonhumans involved allows us to understand the limits of human intentionality. Planning and design are important elements of the research assemblage, but they certainly do not determine outcomes, as the messy reality of research teaches us.

Letting go of the fiction of human mastery over the research process is particularly important when it comes to writing. Here, authorship emerges through engagement with nonhuman others in meaning-making assemblages (Roine and Piippo, 2021). The nonhuman objects which are often considered tools, such as computers, keyboards, and digital notepads, appear as nonhuman collaborators. These ‘material objects play a central role in meaning-making practice, co-constituting texts and authorial subjectivities’ (Gourlay, 2015: 2). In being with writing devices, carrying them from home to work and back, and engaging with them on a daily basis, humans form relationships. Writing devices become affective companions who actively shape texts by affording certain uses but not others. Humans increasingly perceive these technologies ‘as social actors which are rich in social signification, and are capable of transforming and creating meaning’ (Gourlay, 2015: 15).

It is not only these artefacts of creation, but also the creation itself, the text, that becomes a lively participant in more-than-human research. So what forms of writing should being with take? There is certainly no single answer to this question. Van Dooren and Rose (2016: 86) propose storying: ‘A story can allow multiple meanings to travel alongside one another; it can hold open possibilities and interpretations’. To understand academic text as nonhuman agent is to acknowledge its subjectivity. While traditional scientific work strives for objectivity, it is widely recognized that universal knowledge does not exist and text holds multiple meanings. Embracing this ethos, being with text invites openness of interpretation and an active acknowledgement of subjectivity, context, and positionality.

Concluding reflections

The above explorations of more-than-human research contribute to the realization that not only have we never been human (Grusin, 2015: ix–x), but neither has research. The research process, whether it recognizes this or not, is always pervaded and co-shaped by nonhuman affect. Researchers are familiar with the messy realities of carrying out research. Rather than fighting the pulls and pushes of nonhuman agencies, acknowledging them may benefit the research process and, moreover, serve the democratic recognition of the nonhuman agents who surround and pervade us. In recognizing our relational entanglements, we realize that in ‘a lively world in which being is always becoming, becoming is always becoming-with’ (van Dooren et al. 2016: 2).

Above, I developed an account of being with as research approach that builds on existing methodological experimentation with more-than-human encounters. Being with certainly shares several features with engaged witnessing (Bell et al., 2018), more-than-human apprenticeship (Krzywoszynska, 2017), lively ethnographies (van Dooren and Rose, 2016), and moving-with (Lapina and Grum, 2025). What makes it distinct – not in quality but in emphasis – are two elements: the suspension of judgement and a focus on the self.

First, while the above methods stress openness and attunement, they still involve active modes of cognition. Witnessing, for example, requires observation, recognition, and registration. Being with shifts the focus towards nonjudgment, a suspension of verbalization, and cultivating a state of mind that allows for affective co-being across more-than-human boundaries. Second, rather than being driven by a curiosity for the nonhuman other – learning from nonhumans through apprenticeship, documenting nonhuman geographies etc. – being with redirects our gaze to our more-than-human selves, observing our own affects, emotions, and co-becomings. Being with, then, always also means being with our multiple selves.

Being with as a method, element of a research design, or research orientation, as introduced in this research note, is only one way of doing more-than-human research. The emerging field is as methodologically diverse as the various nonhuman research participants it encompasses. This diversity holds promising potential for creativity and innovation in response to the planetary challenges of our time.