Landscape Studies · Environmental Humanities · Feminist STS · Posthumanities
I study microplastic atmospheres, exploring how relations with plastic take shape before we identify it as such.
I am a doctoral researcher in Landscape Studies at the University of Turku. I study plastic waste, particularly micro- and nanoplastics, in Nordic urban environments.
Our relations with waste often begin when it claims our attention: when it is seen, smelled, sorted or thrown away. Microplastics rarely claim attention in this way. They are shed through everyday use and circulate through the atmospheres and landscapes we inhabit, mostly without being noticed or discarded. What we sense and what we take in can be parts of the same material process, distinguished only afterwards through the ways we perceive, measure and name it.
I call this condition in/sensibility: the shifting relation between what becomes perceptible and what enters experience without being perceived. My research stays with this shifting relation. Through embodied and speculative inquiry, I ask how relations with plastic take shape before it is recognised as plastic, and what ethical responses might emerge from that involvement.
How plastic persists and circulates through urban life, bodies, infrastructures and environments.
How micro- and nanoplastics form a medium that bodies and environments are already inside, across Nordic cities, with Turku as a close and grounded case.
How relations with plastic shift between what becomes perceptible and what enters experience without being perceived.
How to attend to what perception and measurement leave out, and what ethical responses this attention makes possible.
Doctoral dissertation · in progress
The dissertation explores how relations with plastic waste take shape in everyday urban life, often before plastic is recognised as plastic. Developing the concept of in/sensibility, it asks how embodied and speculative forms of inquiry can attend to these relations, and what ethical responses might emerge from them.
Walking scores · companion booklet
A set of scores for walking with microplastics, written for Walking Try-Outs: Microplastics. A score is a set of conditions for practice: it offers orientation without determining direction. The scores accompany walks already part of everyday life and leave open what may emerge.
Ongoing reflections from the project, published as Plastic Waste Sensibility — reflections on plastic waste sensibility in the Nordics.
Research-creation · iOS application
It is a research-creation project expressed as a quiet iOS app: an experiment in how questions can arise from ordinary life, rather than from prompts designed to keep us busy.
The project begins from a simple premise: not every question asks for an answer. Some remain with us, returning through ordinary life and changing how we attend to the world.
Questions arrive slowly. Sometimes they do not arrive at all. The pauses are intentional. There are no scores, feeds, streaks, or behavioural metrics. The application is designed to become quieter over time, leaving more room for questions that emerge beyond it.
Sound installation · 2026
A sound installation made from traffic recordings in rainy, snowy, and dry conditions in Turku. It attends to the shared friction of tires and road — the same event that makes traffic audible and sheds microplastic particles into the city, often unnoticed.
Continuous Otherwise · Substack
A personal blog where I think alongside the everyday — tracing how small, ordinary encounters open onto larger questions of individuation, perception, and change.
Email neylan.aular@utu.fi
Affiliation Digital Culture, Landscape and Cultural Heritage · University of Turku
ORCID 0009-0004-0859-5544
Elsewhere UTU profile Research portal Google Scholar ResearchGate LinkedIn Are.na Meanwhile Companion app Continuous Otherwise