Josh Lev is an artist, inventor and budding reciprocal ecologist. His art, inventions and writing are influenced by a background in medicine, design, agriculture and nature studies.


Lev grew up among a diverse community of animals, including the menagerie of 70-plus on his family’s homestead and the hundreds of wild creatures he met in the surrounding meadows, ponds and woods. In his early twenties, he became interested in ecological agriculture and was later drawn to studying human-plant interactions and practicing botanical medicine. Through these experiences, Lev realized that the bonds people form with animals, plants and other kinds of life is one of the vital yet missing components in creating human societies that value and protect other living beings.


Lev's recent work involves the creation of the field of reciprocal ecology, a discipline that provides a new vocabulary and framework for people to discover, talk about and study their social relationships with the nonhuman living beings they meet in their everyday lives.


Lev is president and co-founder of Callix Research, Inc., an intellectual property research and development company that specializes in innovations in medical technologies. He has a passion for inventing low-cost, ecologically sound technologies aimed at improving human health and well-being and has numerous patents issued or pending in the fields of packaging, communication, animal behavior, medical diagnostics, therapeutics and pharmaceutical technology.

At CALLOSCOPE, his studio in Carrboro, North Carolina, Lev also designs and builds interactive sculptures combining aspects of art and science, and works on creating new social and cultural forms to change the way people think about and interact with other kinds of life. His first book, Of All Kind: An Introduction to Reciprocal Ecology, is his latest effort.