The Mind of Plants: Reimagining the Nature of Plant Cognition

John Charles Ryan is Adjunct Associate Professor at Southern Cross University, Australia, and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia. His interests include critical plant studies, Aboriginal Australian poetry, and Southeast Asian ecocriticism. He is the co-editor of Australian Wetland Cultures: Swamps and the Environmental Crisis (2019, Lexington Books) and author of Plants in Contemporary Poetry: Ecocriticism and the Botanical Imagination (2018, Routledge). In 2020, he is Writer-in-Residence at Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia (www.osgf.org) and Visiting Researcher at University of 17 Agustus 1945 (UNTAG) in Surabaya, Indonesia.

Monica Gagliano is a Research Associate Professor in evolutionary ecology. A former fellow of the Australian Research Council, she is Research Associate Professor (adjunct) at the University of Western Australia and a Member of the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of Sydney. She is currently based at Southern Cross University where she directs the BI Lab–Biological Intelligence Lab as part of the Diverse Intelligences Initiative of the Templeton World Charity Foundation. Her work has extended the concept of cognition (including perception, learning processes, memory) in plants. Her latest book is Thus Spoke the Plant (North Atlantic Books, 2018). For more information: www.monicagagliano.com

Patrícia Vieira is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the University of Coimbra and Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, at Georgetown University. Her fields of expertise are Latin American and Iberian Literatures and Cultures, Portuguese and Brazilian Cinema, Utopian Studies and the Environmental Humanities. Her most recent monograph is States of Grace: Utopia in Brazilian Culture (SUNY UP, 20018) and her most recent co-edited book is Portuguese Literature and the Environment (Lexington, 2019). She has published numerous articles in her fields of expertize, as well as op-eds in The New York Times, the LA Review of Books and The European, among others.  For more information visit: www.patriciavieira.net