Call For Papers

The 2nd International Conference on Global Plant Humanities

Date of Conference: 2–3 May 2025 (Friday-Saturday)

Mode:                         Hybrid

Host:                           Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal

Partners:                    Nulungu Institute, University of Notre Dame, Australia

Sadhan Chandra Mahavidyalaya (affiliated with the University of Calcutta)

Gifts from the Sentient Forest (project supported by the Kone Foundation, Finland)

Location:                    Kathmandu, Nepal

Concept Note:

Humankind is deeply interconnected with botanical life. As sources of sustenance, agents of healing, and symbols of wonder, plants are vital to our lives. While offering us materials essential for existence, flora also inspires community identity and expresses cultural heritage. Nourishing, life-supporting, and ever-present, plants represent about ninety percent of the Earth’s biomass. In the current era of intensifying ecological crisis, however, the future of many plant species and communities remains uncertain. If left unchecked, habitat loss, land use shifts, and climatic disturbances will continue to accelerate botanical decline worldwide.

In response to this context, the Plant Humanities (PH) has gained traction internationally over the last five years as an inter-/transdisciplinary area of research, pedagogy, and activism concerning plants and their multidimensional transactions with human beings. 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 Plant Humanities highlights the material and affective linkages between plants, people, and ecologies. Plant humanists investigate the narratives and ideas connected to flora; the creative works inspired by various species; and the myriad values that situate plants in socioeconomic contexts. The field examines a wide range of issues—from climate change and food security to the loss of biodiversity and plant-based cultural heritage. PH is exceptionally well-placed to articulate ethical concerns including the social repercussions of genetically modified flora and the moral implications of plant intelligence for practices of cultivation.

Accordingly, PH aims to promote dialogue and exchange between disciplines to engender new approaches to plants. In North America and Europe, research to date has emphasized cross-sector partnerships between universities, botanical gardens, herbaria, and other institutions. Plant humanists have focused, in particular, on the ways in which artworks, texts, archives, seeds, and preserved specimens narrate complex human-plant relations.   

The 2nd International Conference on Global Plant Humanities at Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu, Nepal, 2–3 May 2025, will further the dialogue between the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences towards novel perspectives on the botanical world and human-flora relations. Highlighting cross-cultural understandings of plant life, the conference will focus on developments in Plant Humanities scholarship across the globe but with emphasis on the biocultural diversity of South Asian countries (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka).

We invite paper and panel proposals including, but not limited to, the following topic areas:

1. Art, literature, performance, music, and plant life

2. Gender, sexuality, and flora

3. Creative practices engaging plants as partners, collaborators, and agents

4. Botanical film, media, and popular culture

5. Phytopoetics, phytocriticism, and phytosemiotics

6. Plants, posthumanism, and the posthumanities

7. Plants, postcolonialism, and globalization

8. Spiritualities and religious traditions centralizing plants

9. Plants, nostalgia, solastalgia, mourning, and memorialization

10. Interactions between flora, fauna, and fungi in literature, film, and performance

11. Traditional and folk botanical knowledge systems

12. Indigenous people’s relations to plants and ecosystems

13. Plant agency, sensing, behavior, learning, and cognition

14. Plant temporality, memory, and communication

15. Plant pedagogies including concerns of ‘plant blindness’ and ‘plant awareness disparity’

16. Citizen science and botanical conservation

17. Social implications of scientific advances in plant cognition

18. Development of the Plant Humanities in the Global South

19. South and Southeast Asian interventions in the field

SUBMISSION PROCESS

Deadline for Abstract Submission: Proposals for 20-minute papers and 1.5 hour panels (with 3–4 presenters) will be assessed on a rolling basis. No proposals will be considered after 1 April 2025. 

Abstract Submissions: Email your abstract (max. 200 words) with five relevant keywords along with a bio-note (max. 50 words).

Panel Proposals: Email your panel theme (max. 200 words) and 3–4 abstracts (max. 200 words each) along with bio-notes for each presenter including the chair. The chair can also be one of the presenters. For panels with 3 speakers, each presenter will have 20 minutes. For panels with 4 speakers, each presenter will have 15 minutes.  

Email Contact: Please send all proposals to globalplanthumanities@gmail.com

CONFERENCE FEES:

Nepali Participants: 2,500 NPR

Indian Participants: 2,000 INR

International Participants: 35 USD

CONTACTS

Please direct all inquiries to the following members of the organizing committee:

For Nepali Participants: Dr Komal Phuyal, Lecturer (Senior Grade), Central Department of English, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal. By email <ephuyal@gmail.com> or phone: +977-9851006250  

For Indian Participants: Mr Goutam Majhi, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Sadhan Chandra Mahavidyalaya (affiliated with the University of Calcutta), West Bengal, India. By email <goutammajhi78@gmail.com> or phone: +91-9051534490 

For International Participants: Dr John C. Ryan, Associate Professor and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Nulungu Institute, University of Notre Dame, Australia. By email only:  <john.ryan1@nd.edu.au>

SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Global-Plant-Humanities/61554500413830/

Website: https://floracultures2020.wixsite.com/gphn/contacts

Whatsapp Group: more information to follow

VENUE INFORMATION

Tribhuvan University is a public university located in Kirtipur, Kathmandu, Nepal. Established in 1959, TU is the oldest and the largest university in the country. The campus is only about 30 minutes by car from National Botanical Garden (NBG), the oldest botanical garden of Nepal. NBG comprises an arboretum, biodiversity education garden, fern garden, Nepali-historic plant garden, physic garden, and many other areas. Some conference activities may take place at NBG. 

ABOUT THE GLOBAL PLANT HUMANITIES NETWORK (GPHN)

GPHN was conceived during The 1st International Conference on Global Plant Humanities, which took place at Sadhan Chandra Mahavidyalaya in West Bengal on the 12th of December 2023, attracting participants from around the world.