Thinking with Plants and Fungi seems the perfect way to start the summer. While I’m attending this conference in person, there is a livestream for anyone who wants to attend remotely.
This conference convenes scholars from across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences together with artists, culture keepers, and practitioners to explore how plants and fungi help us rethink the nature of mind and matter and humans’ relationship to the more-than-human world. The conference will consist of keynote presentations and panel discussions, and time to network and connect with peers.
Cutting-edge scientific research is shedding light on the sophisticated ways in which plants and fungi sense, make sense of, and interact with their surroundings—research that, in many cases, resonates with wisdom that has been safeguarded by Indigenous, folk, and pagan traditions throughout the world. The widespread success of books like The Light Eaters, Braiding Sweetgrass, Entangled Life, and Finding the Mother Tree speaks to a growing public desire to understand and be inspired by nature despite—or perhaps because of—accelerating rates of biodiversity and climate change.
Informed by contemporary science and relational, land-based wisdom, the conference asks:
How do plants and fungi challenge prevailing notions of intelligence, agency, and sentience? How have philosophical and theological traditions, past and present, grappled with vegetal and fungal life? How does close attention to plants and fungi enhance or complicate our understanding of humans’ place relative to other beings? How might plants and fungi invite us to reimagine cooperation, flourishing, and co-existence amidst ongoing ecological and social crises?
The conference explores five interwoven themes:
Science and Research
Philosophy, History, and Theology
Arts and Literature
Decolonial, Indigenous, and Folk Studies
Practice and Community