2026 KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

​Professor Zilkia Janer (in-person)

Hofstra University, USA

Details forthcoming...​

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Professor Juan Carlos Galeano (in-person)

Florida State University, USA

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Title: Entangled Roots: Material and Affective Bonds Between Plants, People, and Ecologies in Amazonian Oral Narratives  

Abstract: My presentation explores the material and affective bonds between plants, people, and ecologies in ten Amazonian oral narratives my book Folktales of the Amazon: "Moniya amena," "Wayramama," "Pumayuyu," "Renacal," "Plantas Boas," "Seringa," "Lupuna," "Sachamama," "Chullachaki," and "Curupira." Using Eduardo Viveiros de Castro's Amerindian perspectivism as the main theoretical framework, I argue that these narratives articulate a multinaturalist ontology where plants are not passive objects but active subjects with agency, intentionality, and transformative capacity. Through analysis of corporeal transformations (Pumayuyu), ethical reciprocities (Lupuna), and liminal beings that challenge Western categories (Sachamama), I demonstrate how Amazonian thought dissolves modern dichotomies between nature/culture, subject/object, human/non-human. Plants in these narratives possess subjectivity, establish social relations with humans, and participate in ecological networks based on mutual respect and perspectivist transformation. Complementing Viveiros de Castro with the phenomenological perspectives of David Abram and the direct voices of indigenous Amazonian cultures present in the Amazonian indigenous book La vida secreta de las plantas and my latest book of aphorisms on Amazonian wisdom (Amazónicas, 2025) my presentation concludes that these narratives offer vital alternatives to contemporary ecological crises: ways of inhabiting the world where forests are persons and planetary health depends on maintaining ethical relations with all beings.

Keywords: Amerindian perspectivism, multinaturalism, Amazonian narratives, plant agency, relational ecology.

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Bio: Born in the Amazon region of Colombia, Juan Carlos Galeano, a poet and teacher, is the author of several books of poetry and the book Folktales of the Amazon. Galeano is also the director of the documentaries The Trees Have a Mother (2009) and El Río (2018). He teaches Latin American poetry and courses on the cultures of the Amazon basin at Florida State University: jgaleano@fsu.edu

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Professor Nirmal Selvamony (in-person)

Central University of Tamil Nadu, India

Details forthcoming...

 

 

Mr Soumyadeep Datta (in-person)

Ashoka Fellow, India

Details forthcoming...

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Associate Professor Judit Farkas (in-person)
 

Department of European Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, University of Pécs, Hungary

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Keynote Title: Religious and Spiritual Approaches in the Hungarian Permaculture Movement   

Abstract: My presentation aims to contribute to global plant humanities with a contemporary case study. For the past fifteen years, I have conducted cultural anthropological research in Hungarian ecovillages and other rural eco-communities, where I first encountered the concept of permaculture. Notably, one of the primary organizations of the permaculture movement, the Hungarian Permaculture Society (MAPER), originated from such a rural eco-community. Consequently, I began to investigate permaculture as a lifestyle, a mode of thought, and a social movement. Permaculture is a holistic design system grounded in ecological principles. It employs systems thinking, envisions the relationship between humans and nature as non-hierarchical, and emphasizes cooperation with the natural environment. Although permaculture principles extend beyond gardening, in Hungary, their application remains most common in horticultural contexts. Social permaculture and other domains have only recently begun to gain prominence. Permaculture also encompasses spiritual dimensions. The permaculture movement accommodates diverse individual perspectives on nature, including sacred, created, and material viewpoints. This paper seeks to investigate the spiritual approaches present within the Hungarian permaculture scene. Specifically, I will analyze which religious and spiritual traditions are represented, their respective roles, and how they are received. The study will also address the interaction between permaculture and spirituality at the individual level, the ways in which they influence one another, and the emergence of new spiritual forms as the relationship between humans and nature is redefined. The analysis draws on data collected through participant observation, interviews, and primary written sources related to permaculture.

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Bio: Dr Judit Farkas is a Sociocultural Anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of European Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pécs, Hungary. She serves as the program coordinator for the Human Ecology MA program at UP. She is the head of the Research Centre for Contemporary Challenges and a vice-leader of the Environmental Humanities Research Group at the University of Pécs. Dr Farkas is also a member of the advisory board for the International Ecovillage Research Institute (IERI). Her primary research interests are rural eco-communities, ecovillages, permaculture, and environmental humanities.
 

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Dr Patrycja Austin (in-person)

University of Rzeszów, Poland

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​Keynote Title: An Apple’s Eye View of Time in Daniel Mason’s North Woods

Abstract: Centered on a long-lived apple tree and the landscape surrounding a house in Massachusetts, Daniel Mason’s North Woods (2023) unfolds in a temporality shaped less by human events than by botanical endurance, decay, and regeneration, while human figures appear and disappear like seasonal ephemerals. Building on Paul Ricoeur’s claim that “time becomes human time to the extent that it is articulated through narrative,” the paper proposes that North Woods tests the limits of this formulation by allowing narrative itself to become vegetal. Time here is not humanized but vegetalized, shaped by ecological succession rather than by individual lives or historical milestones. Formally, North Woods operates as what I call a time-lapse narrative, a literary technique that mirrors scientific and visual practices designed to make slow, nonhuman processes visible. Drawing on plant studies, narrative theory, and phenomenological philosophy, the paper introduces the concept of plant seeing to describe how plants in the novel do not merely symbolize life but actively register, archive, and outlast human histories. Through disrupted chronology, cyclical structure, and shifting focalization, the apple tree emerges as a “witness tree,” a living archive that records colonial violence, environmental transformation, and climate change beyond the limits of human memory.

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Bio: Dr Patrycja Austin is an Assistant Professor at the University of Rzeszów. She received her PhD for her work on Indian Writers in English from Warsaw University. Her monograph Living Time: Vegetal Temporalities in Post-2010 American Fiction will be published in 2026. She also co-authored Memes and Meaning: Presence and Transcendence in Literature.

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