Eilidh Guthrie

Scottish Wetlands Regeneration by Eurasian Beavers: A Creative Practice-led Exploration Focusing on Biodiversity Restoration is a Leverhulme Trust-funded project that utilizes creative praxis to highlight the benefits of beaver reintroductions. Focusing on biodiversity, this research will also consider the broader impacts of wetland regeneration including natural flood management and improvements in water quality.  

This practice-led research combines artistic, geographical, philosophical, and participatory research methods, investigating current water issues in Scottish wetlands. Holistically exploring restoration efforts and engaging with landscapes of varying wetness and change, this project will employ a deep mapping method. Compiling water samples, interviews with relevant stakeholders, photographs, sound recordings, materials, printmaking, and sculptures to allow for observations and connections to be gathered.  

Through fieldwork and site visits, the entanglements between water quality and biodiversity will be investigated at sites of beaver reintroduction, from the first release site at Bamff to more recent sites such as Glen Affric. Observing places of different exposures to beavers through artistic practice can facilitate more-than-human perspectives of these landscape changes. Artists can collaborate with scientists to not only visualise their findings but also give space to the emotions and experiences of these dynamic places. Working speculatively, art has the advantage of employing imagination, thus engaging a wider understanding that is beyond human-centric sense. Creatively and empathetically experiencing the world through the senses of flora and fauna can offer greater appreciation of ecosystem functions and help promote regenerative practices towards equitable and sustainable social and environmental futures.  

Names of Supervisors: Professor Mary Modeen and Professor John Rowan