Speakers - 2025 Thinking with Plants and Fungi Conference

Giovanni Aloi

Professor, School of the Art Institute, Chicago; Editor in Chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

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...

Elaine Ayers

Lecturer, History of Science and Medicine, Yale University

Elaine Ayers is a Lecturer in the History of Science and Medicine at Yale University and holds a PhD in the History of Science from Princeton University. Her work focuses on the entangled histories of botany, colonial violence, and collecting in the...

Emanuele Coccia

Philosopher and Lecturer, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS)

Emanuele Coccia is a philosopher and lecturer at EHESS and the author of La Vie sensible ( Éditions Rivages, 2013), The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (Polity, 2018), Métamorphoses (Rivages, 2020), and Philosophie de la maison (Payot & Rivages...

Jamie Cross

Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of Glasgow Changing Futures, University of Glasgow

Jamie Cross is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Glasgow and Director of the Glasgow Changing Futures initiative. His research explores how human and non-human responses to climate change are reshaping relationships between...

Abigail Culpepper

PhD Candidate, Department of French and Francophone Studies, Brown University

Abigail Culpepper is a doctoral candidate in the Department of French and Francophone Studies at Brown University. With an attention to textuality, their research focuses on problems of ecocritical reading and questions of literary scale. Informed by eco...

Samira Daneshvar

PhD Candidate, Theory and History of Architecture, Harvard University; Chateaubriand Fellow at École des hautes études en science sociales (EHESS)

Samira Daneshvar is a PhD candidate in Theory and History of Architecture at Harvard University and a Chateaubriand Fellow at École des hautes études en science sociales (EHESS). She explores critical episodes in environmental thought across histories of...

Sabina Cruz de la Cruz

Instructor, Instituto de Docencia e Investigación Etnológica de Zacatecas

Sabina Cruz is from Tecomate, Chicontepec, Veracruz, and is a native speaker of the Nahuatl language. She is a Nahuatl language and culture instructor at the University of Los Angeles, California (UCLA). She works at the Institute of Teaching and...

Jacob Erickson

Assistant Professor, School of Religion, Trinity College Dublin

Jacob J. Erickson, PhD, is a constructive theologian and theological ethicist, writing to evoke an ecotheology of planetary conviviality—the playful and just cherishing of life together—amid current ecological crises, ecological injustice, emerging...

William Friedman

Director, Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University

Professor William (Ned) Friedman is the eighth Director of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University (in its 153-year history) and Arnold Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Friedman’s scholarly studies have focused on...

Giuliana Furci

Foundress and Executive Director of the Fungi Foundation

Giuliana Furci is the foundress and executive director of the Fungi Foundation. She is also an associate at Harvard University, a National Geographic Explorer, a Dame of the Order of the Star of Italy, the deputy chair of the IUCN Fungal Conservation...

Monica Gagliano

Research Scientist and Author of Thus Spoke the Plant

Monica is a research scientist renowned for her pioneering work in plant communication, cognition, and subjectivity. Recognized as one of Biohabitats’ 24 most “Inspiring Women of Ecology,” alongside Jane Goodall and Rachel Carson, her research challenges...

Ernesto Gianoli

Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Tarleton State University

After 25 years of academic career in Chile, Ernesto Gianoli (PhD 1999) was recently appointed full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Tarleton State University, Texas. Most of his research lies within the functional and evolutionary...