Journal of Integrative and Innovative Humanities

Editorial Article

2026-05-27

Becoming Amphibian: The Fowler’s Toad and the Planetary Ethics of Relation

Peggy Bloomer — 2026-05-27

This paper reconsiders the amphibian not as an emblem of transformation but as a living agent of planetary becoming. Beginning from an encounter with a Fowler’s toad on the Connecticut shore, the essay explores how amphibious life mediates between water and land, matter and meaning, ancestry and becoming. Through Neil Shubin’s evolutionary paleontology, D’Arcy Thompson’s morphogenetic mathematics, and Gilbert Simondon’s philosophy of individuation, the toad emerges as a transductive being—a mediator through which form, environment, and relation continually co-create one another.

Drawing on Indigenous Algonquian cosmologies of “life between waters,” the analysis extends beyond morphology to ethical and ontological implications. The toad becomes both evolutionary archive and philosophical interlocutor, embodying a world in motion where being and becoming are inseparable acts. Its porous skin, poised between atmospheres, models a planetary ethics grounded in permeability rather than separation.

By merging personal narrative, evolutionary theory, and philosophical ontology, this study advances a multispecies framework for understanding animals as historical and cultural agents. The amphibian thus serves as a teacher of relation, demonstrating that to live, think, and create is to dwell perpetually in metamorphosis—a lesson the planet itself continues to enact through every breathing form.

Feathers of resistance: avian networks and interspecies agency in Tamora Pierce’s Trickster Duology

Surabhi Baijal — 2026-05-27

This paper examines how Tamora Pierce's Trickster duology reimagines avian agency, arguing that crows function not as magical familiars or symbolic figures but as political and cultural agents within a multispecies world shaped by colonial power. Drawing on multispecies studies, feminist fantasy criticism, and young adult scholarship, the paper develops an explicit distinction between agency and instrumentality — defining agency as the capacity to alter political conditions through species-specific practices rather than through approximation of human intention. Where much YA fantasy treats animals as metaphors or instruments, Pierce's crows choose whom to report to, define the terms of their own participation, and sustain the emotional infrastructure of rebellion.

Focusing on crows aligned with the trickster god Kyprioth, the paper demonstrates how avian networks operate as infrastructural systems of communication, mobility, and care, extending the political reach of protagonist Alianne ("Aly") Cooper. The duology inverts traditional power dynamics: Kyprioth does not compel the crows but relies on their voluntary participation, positioning avian agency as the condition for divine power — not its product. The novels further differentiate crow actors by location, access, and relational history, embedding them in distinct spatial and political contexts that shape their risk exposure and proximity to power.

The paper also complicates this account by tracing how avian capacities are reshaped under imperial conditions of surveillance and administrative governance. Through the concept of enrollment, it shows how the same capacities that enable insurgent coordination can be redirected within systems of control, demonstrating that multispecies agency is politically consequential without being inherently liberatory. By attending to how crows traverse restricted spaces, relay intelligence, and sustain emotional endurance, the paper argues that resistance in the Trickster duology is a collaborative, multispecies achievement — and that YA fantasy is a productive site for theorizing distributed political life.

Photographing Panahíd: Capturing the Shore as a Hybrid Space and Fishing as an Entangled Phenomenon

Maria Anjelica C. Wong — 2026-05-27

Photographs are both visual and textual sites for philosophizing on spatial realities. In this photo article, we explore the shore as a hybrid space and fishing as an interaction of the permeable and entangled bodies of the human and the more-than-human through the practice of panahìd, a small-scale fishing practice in Miagao, within Panay Island, Philippines. This paper combines my interpretation of photographs with the photographer’s own insights documented through our unstructured and in-depth interview/conversations or pakikipagkuwentuhan. We treat photographs as both visual data and texts that allow us to reflect on the cultural, environmental, and political realities surrounding the Miagao shore and its fishers. Our posthumanist reading of the photographs of panahìd reveals the shore as a hybrid space where ecological and cultural processes are entangled. This challenges conventional and dualist notions of fixed spatial boundaries across bodies and spaces which allows us to reinterpret our lifeworlds specifically as a people of an island. The findings reveal a growing appreciation for small-scale fisheries amid contemporary threats, particularly the construction of seawalls that place an arbitrary rupture along the shoreline. This allows us to reflect on the effect of hard infrastructure in the shared flourishing of humans and nonhumans and the impact of political embankments – both literally and figuratively – over waters. Ultimately, our philosophical reflections offer a perspective on spaces as fluid, which water particularly embodies, captured and treasured in photographs.

Redistributed Representation Through Multispecies Co-Design in Singapore

Cheng Chen — 2026-05-27

This article examines lion dance practice in Singapore as a site where participatory co-design challenges and reimagines the politics of representation—moving from historically suppressed clan identity and state-managed monovocal multiculturalism toward embodied multispecies agency. Rather than treating lion dance as a static cultural symbol representing a bounded “Chinese heritage,” this study proposes that participatory design interventions enable communities to reclaim representational authority from institutional gatekeepers and state narratives. By centering multispecies collaboration through the lion symbol, performer bodies, and collective practice co-design meaning, participatory approaches redistribute who speaks for the lion, who authorises cultural meaning, and how heritage practice can address contemporary community needs beyond preservation. Drawing on multispecies ethnography with the case study of a co-design project, this article argues for the importance of more-than-human agency in a participatory approach to redistributing representational power in heritage narratives. It implies more spaces required in cultural representation, navigating the dynamics between humans and non-humans, individuals and collectives.

Animals in Transit: Archival Traces of Agency in the Deutsche Indien Expedition 1955-58

Radha Malkar — 2026-05-27

This paper examines the Deutsche Indien Expedition (1955–1958) as a case study of how animal mobility shaped the reconstruction of scientific collections and the formation of scientific networks in the postwar Federal Republic of Germany. In the aftermath of the Second World War, West German institutions sought to rebuild their depleted zoological and ethnographic collections and corresponding institutions like the Wuppertal Zoo. The expedition, which collected and transported living and preserved specimens from India to Germany, played a momentous role in this process. By tracing the trajectories of these animals, from capture and transport in postcolonial India to their arrival and exhibition in German museums and zoos, the paper argues that animals were not passive specimens but crucial participants in transnational networks of knowledge, diplomacy, and exchange. Their movements embodied both scientific ambition and political symbolism, linking the rebuilding of German science to emerging Indo-German diplomatic relations. Drawing on archival correspondence and field reports, the article situates these “specimens” within a broader history of animal agency and postcolonial scientific mobility, revealing how the logistics of care, transport, and display negotiated human–animal dependencies and shaped public understandings of science, nature, and global interconnection. In doing so, it highlights animals as historical and cultural agents whose trajectories illuminate the intertwined reconstruction of institutions, identities, and material knowledge in a world remade by war and decolonization.

Dog(s) walking: darkness, agency, and sensory negotiation

Claire Parkinson — 2026-05-27

Dog walking is typically cast as an ordinary health-oriented routine, yet such narratives obscure the relational, sensory, and political complexities through which multispecies life is organized. This article reexamines dog walking by analyzing nocturnal walks in a private field, drawing on a year-long practice-based research project undertaken with two canine companions. Combining photography, embodied movement, and situated reflection, this study investigates how darkness reconfigures perception, spatial relations, and agency within human-canine encounters.

Engaging with scholarship on darkness, more-than-human agency, and creative walking methodologies, the article conceptualizes darkness not as mere absence but as a spatial-sensory condition that disrupts anthropocentric hierarchies of vision. Limited human visibility foregrounds canine sensory capacities and renders agency legible through movement, traces, and environmental effects rather than through stabilized visual forms. Blurred images, LED trails, and vegetal entanglements operate as methodological artefacts that make distributed agency perceptible while also exposing the technological and embodied mediations through which encounters are recorded. The analysis further situates private dog fields within broader political and infrastructural regimes that shape contemporary dog walking practices. Enclosures, paths, illumination devices, and waste management systems organize responsibility and care, while darkness unsettles these routines, shifting attention from surveillance to embodied familiarity. By centering nocturnal walking practices as both method and phenomenon, the article contributes to innovative humanities approaches that integrate creative practice, multispecies studies, and spatial theory. It shows how walking dogs in the dark distributes agency as relational and emergent and redefines an everyday practice as a site of continual multispecies negotiation.

Nagmamahal, Mama (Love, Mom): An Interactive, Collaborative Cookbook Addressing Pediatric Malnutrition and Picky Eating Behaviors in Children from Quezon City, Philippines

Matthea Lazo — 2026-05-27

Malnutrition in early childhood severely impairs cognitive development, academic performance, and long-term social mobility. In the Philippines, the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) is a government initiative that provides financial assistance to low-income households, yet it lacks a strong focus on pediatric nutrition. Consequently, more than four million Filipino children under five remain underweight and stunted despite receiving aid intended for food and health.

This article presents an interdisciplinary intervention to help combat malnutrition, combining approaches from Psychology, Communication, and Information Design. Working with 30 families in Barangay^[1] Matandang Balara, Quezon City, we conducted interviews, focus group discussions, and home visits to explore food practices and economic constraints. Insights revealed that children’s cravings for salt, sweetness, and crunch often led mothers to choose packaged snacks over nutritious options.

In response, we co-created an interactive, community-based cookbook in Filipino, featuring affordable, healthy, and appealing recipes. The cookbook draws on Harvard Medical School’s Healthy Eating Plate and integrates Zimmerman’s Empowerment Theory, Goffman’s Framing Theory, and the CRAP Principles of Visual Composition. Developed through iterative feedback with participating families, it has now reached 138 households and serves as a sustainable, locally grounded tool for promoting pediatric nutrition.

Racial evolution in the phylogenetic grid of intelligibility

David Golding — 2026-05-27

Phylogenetics produces treelike depictions of human evolutionary history that some interpret as evidence for the biological reality of discrete human races. The colonial history and purpose of phylogenetic methods are reflected in the efficacy with which they infer the evolutionary divergence of races. Contemporary phylogenetics operates through a grid of intelligibility at the confluence of several bioinformatic tools such as genetic cluster analysis, evolutionary dendrograms, island model sampling, and molecular clocks. Since the methods of using these tools are highly flexible, they can be calibrated to align with racial imaginaries and bring putative ancestral populations into focus. The human genome is thereby interpreted as a natural archive of racial evolution. In the process, the colonial history of race is obscured behind a mythical, precolonial time of relatively unadmixed racial origins. By examining the sociogenesis of racial phylogenetics, this article demonstrates the role of the phylogenetic archive in the ongoing biologization of race and the concomitant colonization of time.