Foundation for International Experiential Learning & Design Work
FIELDwork is a transdisciplinary initiative focused on reimagining field-based research through collaboration across scientific and creative disciplines, alongside the knowledge and perspectives of local communities. We work within field sites to explore how scientists, designers, artists, educators, and communities can learn from one another and contribute to a shared practice. Through field expeditions, collaborative projects, education, design, and public engagement, FIELDwork seeks to expand how research is conducted, experienced, interpreted, and shared, creating more meaningful connections between people, place, and knowledge.
Field-Based Exploration
We are grounded in field-based practice, embedding ourselves within the communities and research environments. Through sustained presence, observation, participation, and exchange, we learn from the people, places, and practices that shape each field site.
Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration
We bring scientists, designers, artists, educators, and communities together to work across disciplines, exchange methods and perspectives, and develop ideas that could not emerge from one field alone. These collaborations can lead to new spaces, practices, initiatives, and forms of engagement.
Community Partnerships
We develop sustained partnerships with local communities, working collaboratively to shape initiatives around shared priorities and local needs. Our aim is to create work that communities can continue to develop, adapt, and carry forward beyond our involvement.
Inquiry to Action
We work with our collaborators to turn emerging ideas into tangible outcomes; from community spaces and educational programs to exhibitions, publications, and policies that bring local expertise and scientific research into dialogue.
Ongoing Projects
Eel-Lomaling’a
Women’s Club
What began as a Manyatta intended to support cultural engagement at a hominin footprint site in the Turkana Basin, northern Kenya evolved through our work with local women into a space for gathering, exchange, and community. Built collaboratively using local expertise and techniques, the Manyatta became an emerging women’s club, shaped not by a predetermined brief, but by relationships and ideas that developed through making together.
Kgalagadi
Human Origins
What began as a Manyatta intended to support cultural engagement at a hominin footprint site in the Turkana Basin, northern Kenya evolved through our work with local women into a space for gathering, exchange, and community. Built collaboratively using local expertise and techniques, the Manyatta became an emerging women’s club, shaped not by a predetermined brief, but by relationships and ideas that developed through making together.
Waco National Monument
FIELDwork collaborates with the Kgalagadi Human Origins (KHO) project to connect archaeological research with community engagement, documentation, and creative practice in Botswana. Working alongside researchers and local communities, we explore ways to make field research more accessible, relevant, and connected to the people and places at its centre.
FIELDprograms
We bring art and design students and emerging practitioners into some of the world’s most remarkable and scientifically significant field sites, working alongside researchers, communities, and field teams. Through sustained engagement in the field, participants learn to apply their practices to real research and community contexts while helping develop new possibilities for the work.
FIELDsites
Kgalagadi, Botswana
Turkana, Kenya
Weco, Texas
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Network of Networks
FIELDwork grew from a shared belief that complex field research requires more than a single discipline or perspective. By bringing scientific research into dialogue with design, creative practice, and the communities in which research takes place, we develop more holistic approaches to working in the field, ones that can respond to both research objectives and the people, places, and questions that surround them.
About Us
Assistant Professor in Geochronology at Stony Brook University specializing in luminescence dating, sedimentary geology, and field-based researchMarine Frouin
Desmond Delanty
Principal & Owner of EcoDepot, a design-build and research company specializing in sustainable architecture, fabrication, interdisciplinary design research, and public scholarship.
Thomas Gardner
Educator and Director of the MA Social Design Program at Maryland Institute College of Arts in Baltimore.FIELDstories
Frouin Earns NSF
Early CAREER Award for Research in the Turkana Basin
August 2026
FIELDwork fellow finds an ancient hominin tooth during Kenya expedition
July 2025
A Lake in a Desert: EcoDepot Brings Science and Design Together at MICA
January 2026
About upcoming talk/workshop at MICA?
January 2026