Ethnobotany 2026

Undisciplined Ethnobotany

Society for Ethnobotany Annual Congress 2026 — Montpellier, France

Ethnobotany traces the entangled stories of plants and people — stories of healing and survival, of migration and exchange, of domination and resistance. Yet, at a time when the socio-ecological fabric is fraying, the discipline itself faces the need to be unmade and reimagined.

This congress calls for an undisciplined ethnobotany: one that breaks rules, crosses boundaries, and listens otherwise. It seeks practices that unsettle the extractive gaze and move toward reciprocity, care, and co-becoming. It welcomes methods that are hybrid and experimental — where science meets arts, where stories become inquiry, and where plants are not objects of study but collaborators, teachers, and witnesses.

From laboratory to field, from herbarium to kitchen, from forest to studio space, we invite scientists, artists, and local communities to explore what ethnobotany can become when it refuses to stay in its lane — when it dares to look differently, to feel differently, to know differently. An ethnobotany that purposely moves beyond disciplinary boundaries, becomes a meeting ground, questions inherited structures of knowledge, and foregrounds decolonial, multispecies, and transdisciplinary perspectives.

Through panels, workshops, and site-specific encounters, participants will be able to examine:

• Transdisciplinary groundings across cultural, historical and ecological contexts
• Indigenous intellectual sovereignty and decolonial research ethics
• Situated approaches to ethnopharmacology and traditional medicine
• Diversity and resilience in agroecology and food systems transformation 
• Plants as craft, design, and architecture: towards regenerative material cultures
• The role of art and aesthetics in expanding ethnobotanical imagination
• Linguistic diversity and pluriversal dimensions of knowledge exchange
• Collective stewardship and community participation towards planetary health

From 31 May until 4 June 2026, the congress will invite us to rethink the boundaries of ethnobotany. Not only as a science of plants, but as a practice of relation: between the human and the vegetal, the seen and the unseen, the past and the possible.

Held in Montpellier — a city defined by centuries of botanical study and medical practice — the meeting is co-organised by the Society for Ethnobotany in collaboration with the University of Montpellier (France), the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), and La Maison des Sciences et des Humanités Sud de Montpellier (MSH SUD).

More information will be available soon, check back here often for the latest updates!