This short, imaginative piece was written for the International Trees Foundation for their Trees Journal Issue 78. I am thrilled to support this organization protecting trees in the United Kingdom and Africa.

In this essay, I will address rights for trees, specifically proposing that trees may have a right to place based on the work of phenomenologist Edward S. Casey.

This paper was part of a panel at the International Association for Environmental Philosophy, delivered on October 10, 2020.

A sample of my completed dissertation, Arboreality: Revisioning Trees in the Western Paradigm, is available to view on ProQuest.

Reconsidering arboreal phenomenology has implications for our human relationships to trees and forests, both personal and societal. Read my essay, published by The Side View, here.

This talk was part of a panel at the World-Ecology Research Network Conference 2019, delivered on May 31, 2019.

Reflections from my forthcoming dissertation, Arboreality: Revisioning Trees in the Western Paradigm.

Video of my Ph.D. dissertation defense presentation. Filmed on Feb. 28, 2019.

How do our relationships with non-humans affirm our humanity?

A talk as part of the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) Forum series.

As a study of trees in the Western paradigm, this dissertation enters into the conversation with thinkers in plant studies or critical plant studies. Plant studies draws comparison to animal and multispecies studies and engages thinkers across diverse disciplines. Key voices in this nascent field are Matthew Hall, Michael Marder, Luce Irigaray, and Monica Gagliano among others.

Trees are pervasive phenomena. Our arboreal neighbors are both larger and older than humans with a dramatically different expression of livingness. Trees are intertwined with imaginative, mythological, social, and economic systems across cultures and throughout history.

Video: Plants have been addressed by philosophers since the beginnings of philosophical history. In present times, new approaches to plants, or more accurately, new vegetal approaches to philosophy, are beginning to emerge in the literature. Spurred by new scientific discoveries of plant capacity and intelligence, thinkers in the Western lineage are revisiting conceptions of plants, which in turn is causing a revisioning of our conceptions of ourselves. How can thinking with plants help us respond to environmental crisis? This talk will review recent literature in plant philosophy and propose a participatory model for relating to our vegetal neighbors.