PROGRAMME
Thursday, 28th November
Friday, 29th November
9:00-9:15 // Arrival and registration
9:15-9:30 // Opening comments
Jan Baedke, Vera Straetmanns
9:30-11:00 Session 1:
Conceptualizing knowledge about plants
(Chair: Jan Baedke, RUB)
Fabrizio Baldassarri (The Warburg Institute & Villa I Tatti (Harvard)):
Plant philosophy as a root of seventeenth-century botanical knowledge
Kärin Nickelsen (Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München):
Which power of movement in plants? How nineteenth-century botanists struggled with plant-animal analogies
11:00-11:30 // Coffee/tea
11:30-12:15 Session 1 continued
(Chair: Jan Baedke, RUB)
Quentin Hiernaux (Université Libre de Bruxelles):
Are there taxonomic biases in the representation of plant biodiversity?
12:15-14:15 // Lunch & walk through botanical garden
14:15-15:45 Session 2:
From plant behavior to plant intelligence
(chair: Ann-Christin Fischer, RUB)
Vera Straetmanns (Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Witty weeds: How early theoretical biologists conceptualized plant agency and intelligence
Miguel Segundo-Ortin (Universidad de Murcia):
Comparative psychology: What can we learn from studying plants?
15:45-16:00 // Coffee/tea
16:00-16:45 Session 2 continued
(Chair: Ann-Christin Fischer, RUB)
Matt Sims (University of Cambridge):
Reversible behaviour in climbing plants
16:45-17:30 Session 3:
Plants, nations and vegetal knowledge
(Chair: Vera Straetmanns, RUB)
Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis (University of Florida):
“Say it with flowers”: Elizabeth Britton, roses, and the floral politics of America (1929-1934)
19:00 // Dinner
9:00-10:30 Session 3 continued:
Plants, nations and vegetal knowledge
(Chair: Vera Straetmanns, RUB)
Abigail Nieves Delgado (Utrecht University):
The medical origins of ethnobotany in Mexico (1890-1929)
Jan Baedke (Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Lost legacies of local plant collectors on the Yucatan peninsula, 1930-1978
10:30-11:00 // Coffee/tea
11:00-11:45 Session 4:
Plants and agriculture
(Chair: Federico Boem, RUB)
Frank Uekötter (Ruhr-Universität Bochum):
Do you really need plants when you have magic? The spread of monoculture and the intellectual world of biology
11:45-13:30 // Lunch
13:30-15:00 Session 4 continued
(Chair: Federico Boem, RUB)
Arnika Peselmann (Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg):
Becoming with apples. Doing ethnographic research on human-plant relations in commercial orcharding
Sabina Leonelli & Hugh Williamson (Technische Universität München):
When more knowledge is less power: Extractive epistemologies, data-intensive crop science and the history of cassava research
15:00-15:15 // Coffee/tea
15:15-16:00 Session 4 continued
(Chair: Federico Boem, RUB)
Katharine Legun (Wageningen University & Research):
New digital technologies in agriculture and the politics of care for plants
16:00-16:45 // Final discussion