Call for papers: Revisiting more-than-human political ecologies: methodological horizons and social change (Panel P022) at POLLEN conference 2026
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Pollen2026: Diverse Origins, Multiple Futures: The Stories of Political Ecology.
Where? Barcelona, Spain
When? June 29 - July 3, 2026
Convenors:
Akashdeep Roy (IISER Pune, India) akashd...@students.iiserpune.ac.in
Judith Krauss (University of York, UK) judith....@gmail.com
Sayan Banerjee (NIAS Bangalore, India) sayan.w...@gmail.com
Shalini Sharma (IISER Pune, India) sha...@iiserpune.ac.in
Format: Roundtable
Format/Structure: Dialogic campfire format, where presenters will share five-minute lightning talks producing a key question for discussion between and among presenters
Description:
More-than-human political ecology is an evolving interdisciplinary field that explores the hidden dimensions of human-environmental relations and entanglements by emphasising the agency of nonhuman beings and inanimate materials in shaping power relations and environmental conflicts. One key strength of such a field lies in its methodological pluralism. There is a need to bridge disciplinary and epistemological gaps, not solely through theories but also through interdisciplinary methods. By contrast, one key shortcoming of the emerging field is a lack of clarity on how to operationalise this vantage point for political action and social change and how to overcome tensions between human and more-than-human political ecologies.
In a world of accelerating climate change and biodiversity loss and decreased spaces for political action to tackle this, how can focusing on more-than-human political ecologies serve wider purposes of effecting social change towards justice and sustainability for humans and other-than-humans? And how can we produce 'transboundary' collaborations that transcend disciplinary boundaries and present diverse realities and speculative futures through diverse methods and types of knowledge? For instance, in addition to ethnographic methods, how can ecological methods inform about nonhuman agency and interspecies intersubjectivity in shared/co-created landscapes?
This panel invites questions such as, but not limited to:
How are more-than-human political ecologies connected to wider aspirations for social change, conceptually, methodologically, and empirically?
What has the field of more-than-human political ecologies achieved so far, and where does it need to go next?
What methods in research and communication are needed to illuminate more-than-human political ecologies and connect them to humans' and nonhumans’ lived experiences? In particular, what role does data triangulation play that transcends typical social science/natural science/humanities distinctions?
What field insights, stories, and experiences of relational and unconventional methods can help expand the conceptual, methodological, and social horizons of political ecology?
Please ensure that you only submit your contributions through the POLLEN 2026 Panel Portal. We look forward to an enriching dialogue in the panel and beyond. You are welcome to contact us regarding any questions you may have.
Deadlines:
The deadline for submitting papers and other contributions is December 5th, 2025
The deadline for panel convenors to accept papers and other contributions to their panel is December 19th, 2025
Accepted papers will be announced in January 2026