The wondersearch collective is a small group of creative and open-minded academics, writers, poets and artists who let their imagination roam wildly, supported by a solid research-based foundation.
Their work explores the interconnectedness of all living beings and seeks to give voice to the more-than-human world. They do so by creating hybrid pieces that combine academic rigour with artistic interventions.
If you want to know more or are interested in collaborating with us, please fill in the contact form below.
Current project: The Dandy Explorer
The Dandy Explorer is an illustrated tale that celebrates the dandelion as a non-human trailblazer reinhabiting deserts of concrete and tarmac. We follow the parachuted pioneer from the moment of finding the crack in the pavement and putting down roots, to the time when this tiny start-up, initiated by dandelion, has transformed into a rich multispecies community. In contrast with many of the human explorations of the past, the dandelion’s 'exploitation' of a crack in the pavement does not make the world less liveable for a more-than-human collective. Quite the reverse: the dandelion catalyses a metamorphosis from life-denying concrete and tarmac to life-supporting soil, using the incredible strength of its roots to break open human-made surfaces, all the time offering its own body for food and healing. We approach this tale for our times in a spirit of enchantment, and approach the dandelion, and those who follow its path, as response-able others demonstrating their resistance and inspiring our wonder by co-creating generative communities in de-animated places.
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The collective
Styn, Issy, Harry and Saskia performing The Dandy Explorer at the EASCLE conference 2026
ISABELLA (ISSY) CLARKE somehow found herself working as a football journalist rather than becoming a hedgewitch who lived in a small stone cottage in the middle of Dartmoor as an accepted member of the multispecies community. To compensate for the loss of that possible future, she spends much of her time sitting with trees, crawling under hedges, and reading and writing about the more-than-human-world. Issy is particularly interested in the everyday enchantments presented by contemplating and conversing with beings in her (tiny) garden and the local woods.
As an organisational psychologist, STYN GRIETEN follows invisible threads between people, groups and systems - how they bind, loosen, and are rewoven. Change, to him, is not implemented but slowly co-authored by those it touches. Styn is drawn to the web of nature: woodscapes, birdsong, soil beneath his hands, something sown without the certainty of harvest, and sourdough bread rising. After sunset, moths appear. Styn watches them attentively, listens, and lets them find their way into poems and stories. It has gradually widened his attention as a researcher. The more-than-human world no longer sits outside the frame but speaks from within it. Through creative practice and wondersearch, Styn tries to let these presences speak in kinship as we imagine change and becoming.
SASKIA STEHOUWER is a poet and maker of all sorts of things, from woven branch fences to macrame birds to collages. After a burnout reduced her reading time to one hour a day, she wondered a new path for herself through the fertile space where science, art and nature hold their secret meetings. Saskia has published four poetry books, among which the compostable book connective tissue, handwritten on paper made from kitchen scraps and weeds. She works in an organic store, grows lots of food in her garden and is teaching herself the noble art of tracking in the tiny Frisian woods near her home.
Throughout his academic research life, HARRY WELS has wondered around in southern Africa, mainly in the area of nature conservation. After a long search he found his intellectual home at the Department of Women's and Gender Studies of the University of the Western Cape, where curiosity, creativity and critical thinking keep him longing for more. In the context of an academic course on multispecies organisational ethnography, Harry takes students on 'field days' to a goat farm in the Amsterdam Forest, where together they search and wonder how to make sense of multispecies coexistence in human-designed organisational structures.
Publications
Clarke, I. (forthcoming a). ‘Borderland Co-Becoming: A Song of Imagination’. In Philosophy, Imagination, and the Other: Approaching Humans and Nonhumans, edited by Carlo Salzani and Martin Huth. Springer.
Clarke, I. (forthcoming b). ‘Kairotic Moments: Dwelling in the Borderlands’. In Divergences: An Anthology of Neurodissident Worlds. Posthuman Press.
Clarke, I. (2025). Conversations with Trees: The Experiences of an Arboreal Pilgrim. Plant Perspectives, vol. 2(1). The full article can be read here.
Grieten, S., Craps, M., Verleysen, B., Bouwen, G. (2024). ‘What would the trees tell us? Possibilities for an ecosystemic participatory inquiry beyond human actors’. In Spišák, S. (ed.) Participation, collaboration and cocreation: Qualitative inquiry across and beyond divides. Congress Proceedings of the 7th European Congress for Qualitative Inquiry.Helsinki: Helsinki University.
Stehouwer, S. (2019). bindweefsel (connective tissue). Compostable book of poetry. Baarn: Marmer Publishers.
Stehouwer, S. and Wels, H. (2025). ‘Metabolising the maze: towards a ruderal ethnography’. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 2025/1. The full article can be read here.
Verleysen, B., Grieten, S., Bouwen, G. & Lambrechts, F. (2023). ‘What would the trees tell us? Appreciative Inquiry Practitioner’. International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry 25(2).