The Plant Worlds Project
For the 2025-2026 academic year, the Environmental Futures Team will be focusing on interdisciplinary exploration of the cultural, historical, and aesthetic dimensions of plant life through a dynamic blend of public engagement, scholarly collaboration, and individual research. Public-facing programs and events, such as the Festival of Trees, planned for Arbor Day 2026, a new short-form podcast series on literature and ecology, and a set of art exhibitions will invite community members to experience the cultural, aesthetic, and historical significance of plant life. Complementing these programs are academic events, including the cross-pollinations lunch series, which will culminate in a Plant Worlds symposium in the Fall Semester, the Dramatic Entanglements in Premodern Drama symposium and performances in the spring, and several public lectures by prominent scholars. These programs will bring together faculty across the humanities, arts, and sciences to examine the complex relationships between plant worlds and human culture. The initiative will also support a diverse array of individual research and creative projects, from the production of new art for the exhibitions to academic papers and creative writing.
Through each of the project’s components, we aim to cultivate a diverse range of opportunities to better understand and appreciate the dynamic entanglements of botanical and human worlds in the past, present, and future.
Plant Worlds Projects include:
Plants and Creative Practice Series: What do plants have to do with creative work? How can creativity evolve through engagement with plantlife? Does partnering with plants change our understanding of ‘creativity’ or reframe creative methods and processes? This webinar series from Indiana University’s Environmental Futures in the Arts and Humanities Initiative and the University of Manchester’s Creative Manchester research platform explores Plants and Creative Practice through three dialogues between researchers, writers and artists based at these two universities. Each session pairs creative/research practitioners in focused conversations on how plant life shapes creative work across Poetry, Sound, and Textile Arts to reflect upon how vegetal thinking can shape artistic practice today. Webinar series on March 26th, April 28th, May 11th 12pm-1:15 EST
The no_innocent_landscape exhibition explores the evolving relationship between humans and the forests of Southern Indiana, where climate change, industry, and ecological imbalance have reshaped once-thriving ecosystems. Featuring painter Meg Lagodzki and multidisciplinary artist Maxwell Fertik, the exhibition reflects on the damage and resilience within these woodlands. Lagodzki’s striking tree portraits evoke both rupture and vulnerability, while Fertik’s sculptures made from invasive plants and biochar meditate on cycles of destruction and regeneration. Together, their work invites viewers to confront the ethical and ecological questions of human intervention in forest life. This is not just a story of environmental change, but a call to reckon with our shared responsibility for the landscapes we inhabit. Sept-October, Process Gallery, Maxwell Hall; this will include an opening reception on Sept 5 and an artists talk in October.
Cross-Pollination Lunches are an informal series designed to bring together scholars and artists in the arts and humanities whose work engages with plant worlds—whether through histories of medicinal plants, Indigenous knowledges, botanical writing, and/or global trade. Together we will consider what it means to think and create with plants. Each lunch assembles a rotating panel of campus faculty to share their work-in-progress and spark conversation with fellow researchers and graduate students. The goal is simple: to connect across disciplines and cultivate new thinking around plants, methods, and knowledge-making.
“Breathing Spells”: A Hoosier Herbarium is an interdisciplinary, collaborative project that is inspired by Indiana University’s herbarium and the rich plant histories it holds. Beginning with a small symposium focused on the plant archives of southern Indiana (both on campus and in the surrounding fields and forests), participants will explore how we can tell the deep histories of native plants in fresh, imaginative ways—through visual art, poetry, essays, songs, and more. The project will result in a digital exhibition or an illustrated book showcasing creative responses that bring new life to the region’s botanical past and suggest ways of approaching its uncertain environmental future. We also hope to partner with local musicians and singer-songwriters to transform the materials into song and performance.
