Annual MESH Symposium 2024: Multispecies Conviviality
Save-the-Date | University of Cologne | October 17–19, 2024
The research hub Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH) is part of the reseach iniative “Sharing a Planet in Peril” (SAPP). The focus of this year’s annual MESH Symposium lies on the co-creation of mutually life-sustaining forms of multispecies co-existence in agricultural, urban and industrial environments. This signals a shift in the way biodiversity conservation has been conceived in modern societies, from the protection of nature ‘over yonder’ towards a consideration of multispecies interactions and entanglements in those places where people live, work and produce their food. Within the burgeoning field of multispecies ethnography, these entanglements have been framed in terms of conviviality and care, entailing the cultivation of practices of co-existing in a shared space with a heightened attentiveness to others’ presences, with their species-specific modes of inhabitation, communication and interaction.
The MESH Symposium 2024 explores interdisciplinary avenues of Multispecies Conviviality, highlighting the crucial importance of plants, fungi and the microbial life of soils for the flourishing of all life, as well as grappling with challenges to more-than-human co-existence, such as those posed by the spread of zoonotic diseases. The symposium’s speakers and panellists explore conviviality from archaeological, historical, cultural geographical, philosophical, artistic and literary perspectives and engage with multispecies approaches to conservation in environmental anthropology and the life sciences.
The MESH Symposium 2024 also encompasses the official launch of the University of Cologne BRIDGES UNESCO-MOST hub for Planetary Wellbeing, and is incorporated into the EUniWell MESH Autumn Academy for Planetary Wellbeing (14-19 October 2024).
Further information on the registration process and the detailed programme will be published soon.
Keynote Speakers
ALISON POULIOT (Ecologist & Environmental Photographer, AUS)
EBEN KIRKSEY (Anthropology, University of Oxford)
Panelists
LUCI ATTALA (Social Anthropology, University of Wales Trinity Saint David)
KÁRI DRISCOLL (Comparative Literature, Utrecht University)
SHUMON T. HUSSAIN (Archaeology, University of Cologne)
OWAIN JONES (Cultural Geography, Bath Spa University)
URSULA MÜNSTER (Environmental Humanities, University of Oslo)
SUSANNE SCHMITT (Anthropology, RIFS Potsdam)
MONIKA STOBIECKA (Archaeology, University of Warsaw)
SANDRA SWART (History, Stellenbosch University, SA)
ISHIKA RAMAKRISHNA (Wildlife Ecology & Conservation, Manipal University, Karnataka)
