Elitza Koeva

Elitza Koeva holds a doctorate from Harvard University with a secondary field in Critical Media Practice (CMP) and a master's degree in Media Studies from the University of Tokyo. Her research examines the relationship among sound, place, and "cross-species sociality" (Haraway) to conceptualize space, intersubjectivity, and the sensorium within the framework of the human-animal-machine cybernetic triangle. Elitza's art practice explores temporality and the impermanence of tangible and intangible nature as well as emerging interferences and resonances among sound, space, biotic and abiotic entities in urban contexts. Elitza recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship with the Thinking with Plants and Fungi Initiative at Harvard Divinity School (2025) and is currently a visiting postdoc at Sorbonne Université VALE : Voix Anglophones Littérature et Esthétique. Her work has been supported by the Japanese Monbukagakusho (MEXT) Scholarship, Fulbright, Thanks to Scandinavia, ETH research fellowship, Harvard ArtLab, and Harvard Mellon Urban Initiative (HMUI), among others.

The project

Title : Ethics of Multispecies Cohabitation: Integrating Ethical Observational Science and Sonic Cartographies in the Anthroposphere

"A keystone of Elitza's work has been the digitized archive of 19th-century North American ornithologist William Brewster (1851–1919). Her doctoral dissertation, "Acoustemological Resonances : Brewster’s Archive and the Emergence of Ethical Observational Science" (2024), presented a new conceptual framework that privileged sound and listening as epistemic, affective, and political modes of knowing. Brewster's field notes and photographs, inscribed with the "micrographia" (Aït-Touati) of species and places, provide a generative challenge: how to remediate and reactivate historical multispecies narratives and sensory knowledge for a 21st-century context? Elitza's current project explores how critical listening – mediated through digital, archival, and artistic methods – can foster new models for multispecies cohabitation in the Anthropocene. By combining critical frameworks with digital sound archives and participatory research, Elitza will investigate how environmental archives and emerging technologies reshape ethical, social, and epistemic relations between humans, animals, and machines in changing urban ecosystems."

Hosting institution : Laboratoire Voix Anglophones, Littérature et Esthétique, Université de la Sorbonne.

Selective Bibliography

• Koeva Elitza, « Symbiotic Resonances : Sounding More-Than-Human Worlds » in Petersen Rachael, Powell Russ et Schwien Natalia, Thinking with Plants and Fungi Conference Anthology, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, 2026
• Koeva Elitza, « Phantom Tree : Dryad tales and storytelling through the looking glass », TWPF blog, Harvard, 2025
• Koeva Elitza, « Mars Within », CSWR blog, Harvard, 2025
• Koeva Elitza, « William Brewster and the Poetics of the Avifauna », CSWR blog, Harvard, 2024