CFP: 3rd International Conference on Global Plant Humanities (GPH26), North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India, 8–10 May 2026
John Ryan
Date of Conference: 8–10 May 2026 (Friday-Sunday)
Theme: Botanical Life in Art, Science, and Imagination
Mode: In-person (Online participation available only to international delegates outside India)
Host: Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Meghalaya, India
Venue: North-Eastern Hill University (NEHU), Shillong, Meghalaya, India
Partners: Nulungu Research Institute, University of Notre Dame, Australia; Sadhan Chandra Mahavidyalaya (affiliated with the University of Calcutta); Department of English, Cotton University, Guwahati, India; NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal
Abstract Submission: By email (globalplan...@gmail.com)
Abstract Submission Deadline: 15 March 2026 at 5pm IST
For more information, see https://www.globalplanthumanities.com/2026cfp
Concept Note: Humanity is profoundly intertwined with the botanical realm. As sources of nourishment, healing, beauty, pleasure, and spiritual experience, plants are vital globally. While making our physical existence possible, floristic life also inspires our identities and expresses our cultural heritage. Populating nearly every corner of the world, plants represent 80–90 percent of the Earth’s biomass. Notwithstanding humanity’s indisputable interdependence with botanical nature, the future of vegetal diversity is uncertain. Habitat degradation, land use changes, and climatic instability will continue to imperil forests, wetlands, grasslands, aquatic ecosystems, and other botanical communities.
In response to global environmental change, the plant humanities (PH) has taken shape as an inter-/transdisciplinary area of research, pedagogy, and activism concerning plants and their multifaceted transactions with humankind. Entering the public domain in
2018, the term plant humanities refers to “humanistic modes of interpretation” in the study of flora, society, culture, communities, history, art, literature, and other disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences (Batsaki 2021, 2). According to
the Dumbarton Oaks Plant Humanities Initiative (2023), plants offer ‘remarkable scope for research and interpretation due to their global mobility and historical significance to human cultures’ (para. 1).
The recent turn towards plants in the environmental humanities aims to overcome deep-seated preconceptions of botanical life as insentient, immobile, and inconsequential non-animals. The burgeoning field critiques dominant cultural narratives of flora as passive
and promotes awareness of the significance of vegetal diversity. Scholars draw widely from the related domains of critical plant studies (philosophy), ethnobotany (anthropology), human-plant studies (cultural studies), phytocriticism (literary studies), plant
geography, and neurobotany (plant science).
In dialogue with recent empirical advances, plant humanists reevaluate the longstanding presumption that botanical life lacks sentient behavior. The field considers how emerging intersectional understandings of plants can reshape cultural, social, and literary
engagements with them. Known by an array of names such as plant neurobiology, the science of plant intelligence examines cognitive processes in flora. This growing area of research points to the presence of altruism, communication, memory, sensing, and other
percipient qualities of the botanical world.
Traversing art, science, and imagination, the plant humanities illuminates the material and affective linkages between plants, people, and ecologies. Researchers examine the narratives and ideas connected to flora; the creative works inspired by various species;
and the heterogeneous values that embed plants in socioeconomic contexts. The field investigates a broad range of concerns—from climate change and food security to the loss of biodiversity and plant-based cultural heritage. PH calls attention to ethical issues
including the social repercussions of genetically modified flora and the moral implications of plant intelligence for cultivation paradigms, even indigenous practices and wisdoms intertwined with the secret life of plants and esoteric beliefs that shape the
ecosystems of smaller societies and pastoral communities.
The 3rd International Conference on Global Plant Humanities: Botanical Life in Art, Science, and Imagination
at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, Meghalaya, India, 8–10 May 2026, will further the conversation between the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences towards new perspectives on the vegetal world and human-botanical relations. Foregrounding
comparative, cross-cultural approaches to studying plants, the conference will highlight advances in plant humanities scholarship globally.
We invite paper and panel proposals including, but not limited to, the following topic areas:
- Art, literature, performance, music, and the botanical world
- Narratives of vegetal agency, sensing, behavior, learning, and cognition
- Narratives of vegetal temporality, memory, and communication
- Plants ethics, aesthetics, and phenomenology
- Botanical conservation, citizen science, arts, and humanities
- Social and cultural implications of scientific advances in plant intelligence
- Gender, sexuality, identity, and flora
- Artistic and design practices engaging plants as partners, collaborators, and agents
- Botanical film, media, and popular culture
- Phytopoetics, phytocriticism, and phytosemiotics
- Plants, posthumanism, and the posthumanities
- Plants, postcolonialism, and globalization
- Spiritualities and theological traditions involving plants
- Plants, nostalgia, solastalgia, mourning, and memorialization
- Interactions between flora, fauna, and fungi in narratives
- Traditional and folk botanical knowledge systems
- Indigenous people’s relations to plants and ecosystems
- Botanical pedagogies addressing issues of ‘plant blindness’ and ‘plant awareness disparity’
- The emergence of the Plant Humanities in the Global South
- South Asian interventions in the field (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka).
- Southeast Asian interventions in the field (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste (East Timor), and Vietnam)
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John Charles Ryan, PhD
Kone Foundation Grant Recipient, 2024-26
Gifts from the Sentient Forest, Finland
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow
Nulungu Indigenous Research Institute
University of Notre Dame, Australia
Editor: Plant Perspectives (journal)
Managing Co-Editor: The Trumpeter (journal)
Editorial Board Member: African and Asian Anthropocene (book series with Brill)