ಒದ್ದೆ . odde

ಒದ್ದೆ . oddeಒದ್ದೆ . oddeಒದ್ದೆ . odde

. moist . humid . damp . wet . soaked .

ಒದ್ದೆ . odde

ಒದ್ದೆ . oddeಒದ್ದೆ . oddeಒದ್ದೆ . odde

. moist . humid . damp . wet . soaked .

Odde Research Center

"Odde" in Kannada means wet, humid, moist, soaked, damp. It is a condition of being in the world. We see this an everyday condition inhabited, negotiated, experienced, and worked with.


Odde Research Center carries out fundamental and applied design research, to investigate and respond to global and local environmental crises – from climate change, adaptation and biodiversity to conservation and governance. The center’s work is transdisciplinary, bringing together creative practices, imagination, critical thought and engagement, working on the ground with communities and organisations in complex and sensitive landscapes, towards greater synchronicities and resilience between nature and culture.


Our work is framed by wet ontologies that allow for immersing, investigating and acting in conditions of wetness, in order to uncover narratives of landscapes and communities, and imagine new futures synchronous with environmental change, by engaging in the present. Our lines of research are enmeshed in multiple ecologies, gathering design research, environmental humanities and situated/emergent knowledge systems.


The Center is continually exploring ideas of time, movement, rhythms, situatedness, other-than-human relations, materiality and relational understandings of the world.

Research Areas

Monsoon Worlds

More-than-Human Worlds

More-than-Human Worlds

  

How do we think and do and live in wetness and with rain? In a wet world how can we be attentive to movement and ephemerality, negotiating the everyday?

More-than-Human Worlds

More-than-Human Worlds

More-than-Human Worlds

  

How do we think, do and live with other sentient beings? Can we reimagine how we engage with materials, biota, and appropriate the world with sensitivity?

Ecological Futures

More-than-Human Worlds

Ecological Futures

  

How can we create context-sensitive policies that emerge from an inclusive framing of the environment, from engaging in the ground?

Research projects

Adaptive Ecologies, Climate Extremes

Adaptive Ecologies, Climate Extremes

Adaptive Ecologies, Climate Extremes

We dwell in a world of seepage, and investigate ancient and contemporary everyday practices, working with materials, seasonalities, and wateriness. We unravel situated and tactical understandings responsive to change. We are working in the Swarna Estuary, Karnataka, India, an ecotone that holds multiple worlds.

Making Home, Bidaara

Adaptive Ecologies, Climate Extremes

Adaptive Ecologies, Climate Extremes

We immerse into a world of lines drawn by dwelling in the Southwestern Ghats, exploring and uncovering hidden narratives of movement and place-making. We are ever-becoming the creative itinerant inhabitant.

Multispecies Cosmologies

Beyond Hortus Malabaricus

Beyond Hortus Malabaricus

We explore multiple ontologies through immersion and context-sensitivity. We re-think, re-imagine and re-design the way knowledge of the environment is recorded, interpreted, represented, and transmitted. This is a project to reimagine the People's Biodiversity Register (India).

Beyond Hortus Malabaricus

Beyond Hortus Malabaricus

Beyond Hortus Malabaricus

We move beyond the botanical understandings of plants. In this research project, we uncover relations among plants, wetness and everyday practices, of healing, feeding, growing.

Collaborative Workings

Movement & Ecology

Environmental Humanities

Movement & Ecology

The ongoing collaboration between Dr. Deepta Sateesh and  Dr. Gururaja KV is located between the Western Ghats and the Arabian Sea, investigating movement and sound, within complex and ever-changing ecologies.

Somatic Practices

Environmental Humanities

Movement & Ecology

Artist Dr. Laura Denning and Dr. Deepta Sateesh, have an ongoing series of collaborative works related to Sentient / Somatic Practices, of being-in-the-world situated in wet ontologies. More about Laura here.

Environmental Humanities

Environmental Humanities

Environmental Humanities

In the collaboration with Dr. Meera Baindur we investigate plants as sentient beings through creative practice and critical thinking, working between the field and drawing from environmental humanities and philosophy.

Consultancies

Policy Research & Design

Policy Research & Design

Policy Research & Design

We offer policy research consultancy and design, particularly related to environment and ecology, climate change, and biodiversity conservation, towards climate justice and sustainable livelihoods. We work with government bodies, NGOs, communities and global / independent agencies.

Environmental Education

Policy Research & Design

Policy Research & Design

We offer services to develop and implement holistic environmental education to enable young learners deeply engage with their environment and understand more-than-human relations, in creative ways. We work with to K-12 schools and alternative learning spaces, through our place-based approach.

Sustainable Practices

Policy Research & Design

Sustainable Practices

We research local and indigenous practices, from making home, cultivation and food, to water systems and dependency on rain. From our research, we design community-level sustainable practices that support local livelihoods as well as nurture the ecologies that these livelihoods depend on.

Monsoon School

Come explore environments enlivened by rain.


The Monsoon School is an intensive place-based workshop that focusses on a deep immersion 

in conditions of wetness.


The workshop is carried out across multiple sites and diverse modes to enable dialogues with communities and understanding complex ecologies ever in flux. 


We do this through creative practices and critical thinking, between field and studio.


More on the Monsoon School coming soon...

Residencies

Odde Research Center is a home for creative practice-based residencies, in the areas of wet ontologies, design research and environmental humanities.


Regional and international researchers  concerned with the environment, climate justice, indigenous knowledge, built and natural heritage, and sensitive terrains may anchor with us to deepen your engagement in the southern Indian peninsula, and take advantage of the creative and transdisciplinary research ecosystem of Srishti Manipal Institute, and  MAHE.


We are open all-year round for doctoral students, Fulbright scholars, and other visiting researchers. Please write to us for more information on the possibilities.

Media, Publications & Resources

Talk: Kappe Habba - 18th December 2021

Dr. Gururaja KV delivered a talk (in Kannada) at the Kappe Habba (Frog Festival) 2021, at Muppane, Karnataka. The talk is about scientific research and citizen science approaches, and was organised by the Karnataka Forest Department, Shimoga District. Link to the talk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvKknNyW9-w.

Webinar Series: Nature in our Cities - Say Hi to the Frog

As part of broader theme of #SeekingSustainability and webinar series on Nature in our cities by Azim Premji University, Dr. Gururaja KV was invited to for a talk on frogs. It was titled “Say hi to the frogs” and broadcasted live on youtube. Kaustubh Rau moderated the session that was hosted by Shashwat DC. Please access the talk here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rndQrvDa8Ps.

Paper: Movement and Place-Making in a Monsoon Terrain

Deepta Sateesh.  "Movement and Place-making in a Monsoon Terrain". Dearq, no. 26 (2020): 16-27. https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/doi/full/10.18389/dearq26.2020.02.

This paper was presented at the Cumulus Conference, The Design After, in Bogota, Colombia in 2019.

Paper: A Walk through Malegalalli Madumagalu - Lines that Uncover New Ontologies

Sateesh, Deepta. 2020. A Walk through Malegalalli Madumagalu – Lines that Uncover New Ontologies. Rupkatha Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities. Calcutta.  http://rupkatha.com/V12/n1/v12n139.pdf.

Report: SDGs and Climate Resilience, Wayanad, Kerala

This project was designed to investigate and align sustainability in Wayanad on its own terms and demonstrate how it can  align with the UN  Sustainable Development Goals 2015. The project was a collaboration among the DEL Laboratory, FLEDGE and MSSRF-CaBC, in 2018.

Article: Tile Colonialism, India in Transition, University of Pennsylvania

Visiting Scholar article. Tile Colonialism, Center for Advanced Studies on India, University of Pennsylvania, 5 June 2017.

Our Network

Consortium of Environmental Philosophers
IUCN Commission on Education and Communication
Forum for Law, Environment, Development and Governance

Who We Are

Center Directors: Dr. Deepta Sateesh and Dr. Gururaja KV.


To CONNECT with us please email us at: deepta [dot] sateesh [at] manipal [dot] edu

gururaja [dot] kv [at] manipal [dot] edu.


More on the team coming soon...

Copyright © 2021. Odde Research Center. Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design & Technology, MAHE. All Rights Reserved.


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