A conversation with Monica Gagliano (Human Entities 2024)
15th MAY 2024 > 6.30 PM I FBAUL AUDITORIUM
Plant consciousness: A conversation with Monica Gagliano
Human Entities 2024: culture in the age of artificial intelligence, eighth edition
Wednesday 15 May 2024, 6.30pm
Grand Auditorium, Faculty of Fine Arts, ULisboa,
All welcome, free entry, booking required
Plant consciousness
Monica Gagliano
Evolutionary ecologist, Research Associate Professor (Adjunct) at Southern Cross University, Australia. Monica Gagliano’s pioneering scientific discoveries provides us with powerful evidence that plants possess forms of intelligence. Her latest book, Thus Spoke the Plant, is a “phytobiography”, or collection of stories written in partnership with plants, where she shares genuine first-hand accounts from her research into plant communication and cognition. Inspired by encounters with Nature and indigenous elders from around the world, she looks beyond mechanistic explanations, and presents the need for a more unified worldview – one where science and spiritually complement each other. Plant cognition is a new and exciting field of research directed at experimentally testing the cognitive abilities of plants, including perception, learning processes, memory and consciousness. The emerging framework holds considerable implications for the way we perceive plants as it redefines the traditionally held boundary between animals and plants.The novel concepts and perspectives emerging from this research on vegetal life are galvanising a truly interdisciplinary dialogue across an array of academic disciplines, including science, philosophy, environmental law, literature and the arts.
Monica Gagliano
Monica Gagliano PhD is an internationally award-winning research scientist, selected by Biohabitats as one of the 24 most Inspiring Women of Ecology, together with Jane Goodall, Rachel Carson, Sylvia Earl, and Terry Tempest Williams. She has been an invited lecturer at the most prestigious universities, including UC Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, Dartmouth and Georgetown. Monica’s pioneering work has been widely featured by prominent media, such as The New York Times, Forbes, The New Yorker, The Guardian, National Geographic, and many others. Monica is Research Associate Professor (Adjunct) of evolutionary ecology based in Australia. She is currently Chief Scientist at Kaiāulu|Coherence Lab in Hawaii, and Research Associate at the Takiwasi Centre in Perú. Monica has pioneered the brand-new research field of plant bioacoustics, which for the first time, experimentally demonstrates that plants emit voices and detect and respond to the sounds of their environments. Monica’s studies have led her to author numerous ground-breaking scientific articles and books, including Thus Spoke the Plant (2018) and The Mind of Plants (2021).
https://www.monicagagliano.com
https://www.instagram.com/_monicagagliano_
The talk will be in English and followed by a Q&A session.
This event is organised by CADA in partnership with Lisbon Architecture Triennale and Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (Departments of Communication Design and of Multimedia Arts) as part of Human Entities 2024: culture in the age of artificial intelligence, eighth edition (Public talks, May – June 2024); program focused on technological change and its impacts, on the ways in which technology and culture influence each other.
Read more about the programme
NOTE: Special needs:
Access for people with motor disabilities and sign language translation: please contact sofiaoliveira506@gmail.com and we will endeavour to provide the service.