RICHARD FADOK

1 APRIL

SYMPOSIUM

Rochester, New York

I will be hosting, organizing, and participating in a symposium for members of the Central New York Humanities Corridor working group on animal studies at RIT.

Image credit: RIT (2025)

1 MARCH

SPEAKER

Rochester, New York

Through funds awarded to the Urban Natures working group by the Central New York Humanities Corridor, I will be inviting the architectural historian Nida Rehman to speak at RIT. Her talk will be titled “The Gardens of Lahore: Ecology, Disease, and Urban Infrastructure.”

Image credit: U.S. News & World Report (2025)

12 FEBRUARY

TALK

Rochester, New York

I have been invited to speak to the Rochester Birding Association about my initiative Smash the Crash. My talk will be titled, “Smash the Crash: A Community Initiative to Study and Prevent Bird-Window Collisions in Rochester.”

19-23 NOVEMBER

CONFERENCE

New Orleans, Louisiana

I will be co-organizing and participating in two events at the 2025 meeting of the American Anthropological Association. The first is a paper panel with Maron Greenleaf on “The Ghosts of Contemporary Environmentalism(s).” My talk is titled “Commodity Animism: On the Magic of Mimesis in American Biomimicry.” The second is a roundtable with Cady Gonzalez, called “Toward an Anthropology of Architecture.”

Image credit: AAA (2025)

1 OCTOBER

READING GROUP

Ithaca, New York

I will be organizing and participating in the first reading group for members of the Central New York Humanities Corridor working group on animal studies at Cornell University. We will be reading Marcy Norton’s The Tame and the Wild.

Image credit: Harvard University Press (2024)

20 MAY

FIELDWORK

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

As part of my fieldwork for Syntopia, I met with the ornithologist Mark Hauber to discuss bird-window collisions at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Advanced Science Research Center.

13-14 MAY

WORKSHOP

Williamstown, Massachusetts

I was invited by Laura Martin to participate in a workshop hosted by Williams College and held at The Clark Art Institute. This interdisciplinary event brought together biologists, architects, and humanists to ask how buildings can improve biodiversity. Other participants included Joyce Hwang, Ariane Lourie-Harrison, Karen M’Closkey, Tessa Kelly, and Nina-Marie Lister, among others.

8-11 MAY

(UN)CONFERENCE

Stony Point, New York

At the 2025 biennial meeting for the Society for Cultural Anthropology, titled “Restorative Relations: An (Un)Conference,” I was invited to participate in “Working toward the Multispecies: A Works in Progress Session.” Organized by Amanda Cortez and Emily de Wet, this session brought together early-career multispecies ethnographers, including Shweta Krishnan, August Hoffman, and Calvin Edward.

7 MAY

WORKING GROUP

Rochester, New York

I received a grant from the Central New York Humanities Corridor for a working group that I organized on animal studies, with George Kallander and Annetta Alexandridis. This group brings together twenty eight members from eight participating institutions in the state.

6 MAY

WORKSHOP

Zoom

I participated with other anthropologists and historians in a one-day virtual workshop on artificial bird nesting sites organized by Dolly Jørgensen and Thomas Reitmaier. I shared a paper on birdhouses designed by contemporary professional architects.

Image credit: Dolly Jorgensen and Thomas Reitmaier (2025)

1 MAY

CRITIQUE

State College, Pennsylvania

I was invited to participate as a guest critic in the final review of the senior design studio in landscape architecture at Pennsylvania State University. The course, “Co-Creating with Animals,” was run by Roxi Thoren and explored how to practice multispecies design.

29 APRIL

TALK

Rochester, New York

I was invited to give a talk in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at RIT, titled “Ghosts in the Glass: Bird-Window Collisions and the Haunted Materiality of Architecture.”

26 APRIL

TALK

Rochester, New York

I was invited to give a public talk at the Braddock Bay Raptor Research’s annual Bird of Prey Days event. My talk was titled “Smash the Crash: An Interdisciplinary Initiative to Stop Bird Collisions at the University of Rochester.”

Image credit: Daena Ford (2025)

24 APRIL

EXHIBITION

Rochester, New York

Mizin Shin and I co-curated an exhibition on bird-window collisions outside the Frontispace Gallery at the University of Rochester. It features information about my initiative Smash the Crash as well as student work from Shin’s course Advanced Print Media. In this course, students designed bird-safe window films.

21 APRIL

SEMINAR

Syracuse, New York

I was invited to speak in Romita Ray’s “Flora/Fauna,” a graduate seminar in the Department of Art History at Syracuse University. I was joined by the ornithologist Mark Hauber, Irina Savinetskaya from the Special Collections Research Center, and curators from the university museum.

Image credit: Romita Ray (2025)

15 APRIL

TALK

Syracuse, New York

I was invited to give a talk in the Department of Environmental Studies at SUNY ESF, titled “Ghosts in the Glass: Bird-Window Collisions and the Haunted Materiality of Architecture.”

4 APRIL

WORKSHOP

Rochester, New York

With Llerena Searle, I co-organized a one-day works-in-progress event at the University of Rochester on the anthropology of design, thanks to funding from the Humanities Project. Participants included Keith Murphy, Lilly Irani, Namita Dharia, Dean Chahim, Jessica Hardin, Christien Philmarc Tompkins, Samuel Shearer, and Liliana Gil. The chapter I shared was titled “Design’s Anthropologies: Natives from a Designer’s Point of View.”

24-28 MARCH

CONFERENCE

Detroit, Michigan

I co-organized a two-part panel with Timur Hammond, titled “The Four Ecologies of Architecture.” The panel, a play on Reyner Banham’s The Architecture of Four Ecologies, delved into the relationship between architectural form and forms of nonhuman life. My talk, “Ghosts in the Glass: The Haunted Materiality of Architecture,” centered on the history of glass architecture and the environmental impact of transparency as an aesthetic ideal.

17-18 MARCH

MEETING

Los Angeles, California

I participated in the fourth and final meeting of the Multispecies Constitution Project organized by Claire Webb at the Berggruen Institute. We debated and deliberated over the first draft of the constitution.

Image credit: Berggruen Institute (2025)

14-15 MARCH

WORKSHOP

Providence, Rhode Island

I was invited to participate in a workshop called “From Menageries, to Zoos, to Everything in Between: Can We Envision a New Breed of Zoo?” This event was sponsored by the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, the Program in Early Cultures, the Department of History, and the Center for Environmental Humanities.

Image credit: Jada Ko (2025)

2-3 MARCH

CONFERENCE

State College, Pennsylvania

I gave a talk at the interdisciplinary conference “Biophilia: Designing for Animals.” This event brought together ecologists and architects to discuss how to improve biodiversity. I was joined by Andy Cole, Nina-Marie lister, Doug Tallamy, Alex Webb, Catherine Harris, Katherine Boles, Halina Steiner, and Josh Cerra, among others.

Image credit: Andy Cole (2025)

28 FEBRUARY

TALK

Syracuse, New York

I was invited by Meredith Barges to give a talk to students and faculty at SUNY ESF, titled “Smash the Crash: An Interdisciplinary Initiative to Stop Bird Collisions at the University of Rochester.”

24 FEBRUARY

TALK

Rochester, New York

I presented the results of our fall bird-window collision study at Smash the Crash to the University of Rochester’s Department of University Facilities and Services. We recommended retrofits to our most lethal buildings and revisions to the university’s design standards, both of which were accepted.

10 FEBRUARY

TALK

Rochester, New York

I was invited by Karl Korfmacher to give a talk at the Thomas H. Gosnell School of Life Sciences at RIT. My talk was titled “Smash the Crash: An Interdisciplinary Initiative to Study and Prevent Bird-Window Collisions.”

3 FEBRUARY

TALK

Rochester, New York

I was invited by Mizin Shin to give a talk to students in her course Advanced Print Media at the University of Rochester. My talk was titled “Smash the Crash: An On-Campus Initiative to Study and Prevent Bird-Window Collisions.” For the remainder of the semester, I served as an expert consultant on a semester-long project centered on designing bird-safe window films for the Sage Art Center.

10 DECEMBER

WORKING GROUP

United States

I became a participating member of the Glass and Architecture Working Group organized by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. This working group is part of their Bird Collision Prevention Alliance.

6 DECEMBER

CRITIQUE

Syracuse, New York

I was invited to participate as a guest critic in the final review of the junior design studio in architecture at Syracuse University. The course, “Even Better Homes and Gardens: Towards Multi-Species Households and Kin,” was run by Stephen Zimmerer. Other critics included Noam Dvir and Daniel Rauchwerger (BoND Architecture), Thomas Hogge (Other Lands), Victor Zagabe, and Elizabeth Kamell.

20-23 NOVEMBER

CONFERENCE

Tampa, Florida

For the 2024 meeting of the American Anthropological Association, I participated in two roundtables: one on the pedagogical challenges of teaching about the environment, titled “Teaching, Supporting, and Empowering Undergraduate Students While Confronting the Climate Crisis and All the Other Crises,” and another on the article I wrote for Teaching and Learning Anthropology’s special issue on “Teaching the City.”

21-23 NOVEMBER

CONFERENCE

Norwich, England

My abstract “Syntopia: A Multispecies Phenomenology of Space” was accepted at Body Matters, the 2024 meeting of the Architectural Humanities Research Association.

12 NOVEMBER

TALK

Rochester, New York

I was invited to give a talk about Smash the Crash to the Environmental Sustainability UCIS (University Committee for Interdisciplinary Studies) at the University of Rochester.

7 NOVEMBER

CRITIQUE

Syracuse, New York

I was invited to participate as a guest critic in a mid- review of the junior design studio in architecture at Syracuse University. The course, “Gerald Dreams: Just Un-Other Commons,” was run by Victor Zagabe. Other critics included Hermine Demael, Britt Eversole, Ruben Dario Gomez Ganan, Brian Lonsway, Lauren Scott, and Nathan Williams.

16 OCTOBER

SEMINAR

Rochester, New York

I shared a draft of an article about bird-window collision at this work-in-progress seminar. The title is “Ghosts in the Glass: Gravely Entanglements in Bird-Window Collisions.”

26-30 AUGUST

FIELDWORK

London, Ontario

For my project Syntopia, I conducted fieldwork with ornithologists, conservationists, and designers filming a documentary about their work on bird-safe design to understand how they evaluate glass and communicate their findings to the public. During my time there, I made a media appearance on CTV London. This fieldwork will appear in my chapter in Urban Animalia.

22 AUGUST

NEWS

Rochester, New York

I was interviewed by Justin Murphy at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle about my research on bird-window collisions. The story was picked up by the Ithaca Journal.

15-18 JULY

CONFERENCE

Amsterdam, Netherlands

At the 2024 quadrennial joint meeting of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology and the Society for Social Studies of Science, I presented a talk titled “When Species Collide: The Architectural Entanglements of Bird-Window Collisions.” This talk was part of the panel “Architecture in the New Climatic Regime: Transforming Material Practices,” co-organized by Cordula Kropp and Albena Yaneva.

23-26 MAY

FIELDWORK

Allentown, Pennsylvania

As part of my ongoing ethnographic project Syntopia, I conducted fieldwork with ornithologists to understand how they study bird-window collisions and experimentally test bird-friendly glass. During my fieldwork, I made a media appearance on CTV London. This fieldwork will appear in my chapter in Urban Animalia.

1 MAY

CRITIQUE

Buffalo, New York

I was invited to serve as a guest critic in the University of Buffalo Sophomore Design Studio’s final review. With insights from ecological urbanism, posthuman studies, and inclusive design, this course challenged students to explore nonhuman species as stakeholders in their exploration of architectural concepts of site and context.

19 APRIL

WORKING GROUP

Ithaca, New York

I joined this year’s gathering of Urban Natures at the Cornell Botanic Garden. Urban Natures is an interdisciplinary working group co-organized by Chloe Ahmann, Ezra Akcan, Romita Ray, and Timur Hammond and sponsored by the Central New York Humanities Corridor.

19 APRIL

FIELDWORK

Ithaca, New York

I interviewed architects and ornithologists associated with the development and implementation of Cornell University’s design and construction standards for bird-friendly design. I was interested in how ornithological science becomes codified into both institutional policy and design practice.

28 NOVEMBER – 3 DECEMBER

FIELDWORK

San Antonio, Texas

I conducted fieldwork at Birdsong Brackenridge, an exhibition of birdhouses designed by professional architects, to learn how environmental conservationists mobilize animal architecture as a communicational medium. Research from this trip, which included interviews with the organizer and all participant architects, will feature in my essay for Noema.

15-19 NOVEMBER

CONFERENCE

Toronto, Canada

For the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, my colleague Grace Kim-Butler and I co-organized and co-chaired the panel “Badgering Space: Topologies of Human-Animal Encounter.” Fellow speakers included Sarah Franklin, Andrea Pettit, Tanya Richardson, and Hannah Eisler Burnett. We are currently in discussions with an academic press about an edited volume based on our papers.

13-14 NOVEMBER

MEETING

Los Angeles, California

For the second meeting of the Berggruen Institute’s Multispecies Constitution Project, I wrote a short entry on the concept of “syntopia,” which was published in the Multispecies Lexicon. Over two days, we workshopped papers from Cary Wolfe, Caroline Jones, Jonathon Keats, Alyssa Collins, Becca Franks, and Christine Winter.

8-11 NOVEMBER

CONFERENCE

Honolulu, Hawai’i

At the annual meeting of the Society for the Social Studies of Science, I presented a talk on the panel “Evil Animals? Pests of the Sea, Sky, and Land,” organized by Chris Kelty. My talk was titled “Going to Bat for Bats: Pest Activism and the Speciation of Space.”

24 OCTOBER

SEMINAR

Rochester, New York

I shared a draft of my paper on the concept of “syntopia” with an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the Jesse L. Rosenberger Work-in-Progress Seminar, run by the Humanities Center. This paper applies a material-semiotic approach to understand the built environment.

9-15 JULY

PROGRAM

Urbana, Illinois

I applied and received an offer to participate in the Animal Studies Summer Institute at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where I workshopped a paper on birdhouses, Gaston Bachelard, and nonhuman phenomenology. I also commented on a paper by Yuping Hsu on animal documentaries. My reflection on the event is available on Backchannels.

5-6 MAY

SYMPOSIUM

Rochester, New York

I was a moderator and commentator for a panel on “Contestation” at Lines of Property, an architectural history symposium organized by Peter Christensen, Claire Zimmerman, and Lisa Haber-Thomson at the University of Rochester.

27 APRIL

SYMPOSIUM

Brooklyn, New York

A handful of students from my seminar-studio “Space/Power/Species” and I took the train to New York City from Philadelphia to participate in Speculating the Environment, a cross-disciplinary symposium at Pratt that brought together scientists, designers, artists, and writers to discuss environmental futures. I gave an introduction to the course, and my students gave brief talks and later exhibited their speculative design projects at the reception.

14 APRIL

COLLOQUIUM

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I was invited to give a talk to the Humanities, Urbanism, and Design Initiative’s colloquium at the University of Pennsylvania. This interdisciplinary space put designers from architecture and landscape architecture into conversation with social scientists and scholars in the humanities.

21 MARCH

SEMINAR

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

At the University of Pennsylvania, I presented a paper-in-progress on birdhouses for the Wolf Humanities Center’s Mellon Research Seminar on heritage. Lindsay Ceballos offered a commentary.

16-17 MARCH

MEETING

Los Angeles, California

During the first meeting of the Berggruen Institute’s Multispecies Constitution Project, I gave a pecha kucha on the concept of “syntopia” and participated in two days of deliberation around the possibility of a political charter for nonhuman protection.

24 FEBRUARY

SYMPOSIUM

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

With other postdoctoral fellows and graduate students in the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania, I co-organized a day-long series of talks on the topic of cultural heritage. Speakers included Jamal Elias, Emily Wilson, NaOmi Richardson, Krystal Strong, Francesca Ammon, Richard Leventhal, Felipe Rojas Silva, Alex Chavez, Kim TallBear, and Barbie Zelizer.

21 FEBRUARY

CRITIQUE

Ann Arbor, Michigan (via Zoom)

I was asked to join a student roundtable as a guest critic in Claire Zimmerman and Michaela Rife’s course “Animal Architecture” at the University of Michigan. Students in this course from architecture and architectural history presented preliminary framings of their original research papers.

29 NOVEMBER

SEMINAR

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I delivered a written commentary on Anna Mueser’s paper “So the Memories Fade: Writing Continuity across Rupture” for the Mellon Research Seminar on Heritage. This seminar was organized by the Wolf Humanities Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

23-28 OCTOBER

FIELDWORK

Catskill, New York

I observed, and participated in, the installation of a trio of multispecies habitat boxes at a landscape hotel in the Hudson Valley. This project was a joint effort between Joyce Hwang (University of Buffalo) and a group of first-year master’s students in Pratt Institute’s landscape architecture program.

19 OCTOBER

FIELDWORK

Brooklyn, New York

I conducted fieldwork at an exhibition of birdhouses designed by professional architects, industrial designers, and visual artists. It was titled “For the Birds.” My observations on this exhibition, along with interviews with over ten architects, will feature in my essay for Noema.

12 SEPTEMBER

WORKING GROUP

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I organized and ran a working group for writers at the University of Pennsylvania, which hosted postdoctoral fellows from the Wolf Humanities Center, the Department of Anthropology, the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies, and the Center for the Advanced Study of India. We met regularly throughout the academic year.

12-18 JUNE

PROGRAM

Manhattan, New York

I was accepted as a Fellow at the New School’s Institute for Critical Social Inquiry, where I took Jay Bernstein’s one-week-long seminar “Of Masters and Slaves: Reading Hegel’s Phenomenology.”