Global Plant Humanities Network

The 3rd International Conference on Global Plant Humanities at North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India, 8–10 May 2025, will further the conversation between the arts, humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences towards new perspectives on the vegetal world and human-botanical relations. 

 

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.  

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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).

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