Panel and Performance: "Botanical Art and Fungal Sounds"

Giovanni Aloi, PhD, is an art historian, editor, and curator specializing in environmental politics and the representation of nature in art. Aloi has published numerous books, including Art & Animals (I.B Tauris, 2011), Speculative Taxidermy (Columbia University Press, 2018), Botanical Speculations (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018), Why Look at Plants? (Brill | Rodopi, 2019), Lucian Freud Herbarium (Prestel, 2019), Estado Vegetal (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2023), Vegetal Entwinements (co-edited with Michael Marder, The MIT Press, 2023), Botanical Revolutions (Getty Publications, 2025), and Lawn (Object Lesson) (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). He has contributed to BBC radio programs, worked at Whitechapel Art Gallery and Tate Galleries in London, is a U.S. correspondent for Esse Magazine, and a speaker at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Siôn Parkinson is a visual artist, composer, performer, and writer investigating our sensory relationship with the more-than-human world. His first book is forthcoming: Stinkhorn: How Nature’s Most Foul-Smelling Mushroom Can Change The Way We Listen (Sternberg Press, March 2025). Siôn is a research fellow at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, where he explores the olfactory heritage of fungi—mushroom smells that are meaningful to individuals or communities due to their association with significant places, objects, or traditions. Originally trained as a sculptor, Siôn received his PhD in sound studies from the University of Leeds, where he was an Amanda Burton scholar.

The 2025 conference brought together interdisciplinary scholars, artists, practitioners, and culture keepers to explore the relationship between humans and the more-than-human world through the lens of plant and fungal life. Thinking with Plants and Fungi: An Interdisciplinary Exploration into the Mind of Nature invited participants to reflect on how plants and fungi challenge dominant assumptions about consciousness, cooperation, and coexistence in the face of ecological and social crises.

Following in the tradition of the Center for the Study of World Religions' engagement with emerging conversations on ecology, spirituality, and mind, the conference featured keynote talks and panel discussions with leading voices across the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Speakers included Merlin Sheldrake, Giuliana Furci, Emanuele Coccia, Banu Subramanian, Jessica J. Lee, Zoë Schlanger, Monica Gagliano, Michael Marder, and others.

For additional materials and resources, including speaker bios and readings, visit: https://cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publicat....