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