The HumaneLab
The HumaneLab
Open magazine · Free to read

Stories, images and ideas about what it means to be human.

The HumaneLab is a free, open magazine where researchers, artists, writers and curious people share essays, photos, poems, films and conversations about the world we live in.
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Everything we publish is free. No subscriptions, no paywalls, no account needed.
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02

Explore a theme

Each season we choose one theme and publish essays, photos, films and conversations around it.
This season’s theme →
03

Contribute

Anyone can send a proposal, in any format. You don’t need to be an academic — just have something to say.
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This season's theme
All cycles
Cycle 01 · Sep 2026 – Feb 2027

Migration / Movement / Belonging / Exclusion

Moving, arriving, staying, waiting, returning — and how places decide who belongs. These are the questions guiding this season:
  • What does it mean to inhabit a place that does not fully recognise us?
  • How are borders lived in everyday life, long after the checkpoint?
  • How do we feel waiting, transiting, returning — or the impossibility of ever returning?
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Latest pieces
Terminals, platforms, decks and windows: a sequence about the hours no one counts.
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Photography

Waiting Rooms

Amaru Quispe · 7 photographs
The checkpoint lasted forty minutes. The border has lasted twelve years.
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Essay · Video

The Border I Carry

Leila Haddad · 4 min film + 6 min read
Dear house, they painted over you in a colour you would hate.
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Audio · Poetry

Letters to a House I Cannot Return To

Tomás Rendón · 5 min listen
Waiting is not the absence of life. It is a life, with its own rules, its own economy, its own grief.
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Essay

Inhabiting the Unrecognised

Nkechi Obi · 9 min read
“The recipe is the only document my grandmother ever gave me.”
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Conversation · Photography

Two Kitchens

Mariana Duarte & Yusuf Demir · 7 min read
Open call · until 30 November 2026

Have something to say about this theme?

Send us a proposal: an essay, photos, a poem, a video, a recording, a conversation. Researchers, artists, activists, students, and curious minds are all welcome.

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Events

Talks, readings & workshops

No upcoming eventsTalks, readings and workshops for this cycle will be announced here and in the newsletter.
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