July 23-24, 2026 | Auerbach Library, MESH (Weyertal 59, back building 3rd Floor, 50937 Köln)

Organised in collaboration with the Global South Studies Center (GSSC)

For participation, registration in advance is required.
Please register here if you want to come in person.
Please register here if you want to participate online. 

The full workshop programme is available here.

WORKSHOP
Interdisciplinary discussions of the effectiveness of the ethics of care and reciprocity, which are the foundational values of many Indigenous worldviews, are now emerging. The proposed workshop aims to accentuate this aspect of environmental and planetary thinking, specifically attempting to deliberate and comprehend how alternate modes of developmentalism have been prevalent in different communities of the Global South.
Some of the pertinent research questions that this workshop will address are how Indigenous knowledge acted as an exemplar of multispecies thinking and holistic living, in what ways can these knowledge forms be regarded as advocating mutuality and care for human and non-human forms? Why and how are the versions of multispecies care being represented in literary and other cultural documents? Can fiction from Indigenous communities in the Global South serve as representative narratives for imagining alternative possibilities of relating to the planet and reconceptualising pluriversal developmentalism and justice?
As planetary crises deepen, communities in the Global South continue to imagine and practice more just and livable worlds. This workshop brings together scholars and practitioners to explore multispecies thinking through the ethics of care, reciprocity, and Indigenous knowledges.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS
Pequi Trees and Multispecies Ecologies of Care in the Brazilian Cerrado: Colonial Frontiers, Resistance, and More-than-Human Histories
Claiton Marcio da Silva, Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul, Brazil

Sacred Obligation and Brackish Life: Vernacular Multispecies Care in the Sundarbans
Jenia Mukherjee and Agrima Mishra, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

Taxonomic Diplomacy and Multispecies Care: Reimagining the Pygmy Hog in Assam, India
Mridutpal Sinharay, Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany

The Severance of Elemental Relationality: China’s Compressed Modernity in The Waste Tide
Xiaohui Liang, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China

Hope in the Anthropocene: Eco-Collectivism and Multispecies Entanglement in Contemporary South Asian Novels in English
Rakibul Hasan Khan, University of Otago, New Zealand

The Ethics of Cohabitation: Multispecies Belonging and Religious Environmentalism in the Indian Sundarbans Delta
Pritha Chakraborty, Amity University Bengaluru, India

Demos Beyond the Human: Multispecies Political Collectives in the Forest
Léa Lacan, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne, Germany

Multispecies Care, Ethics, and Entanglements: Reimagining Development Through Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Programme
Henry Tambala, MESH, University of Cologne, Germany

Extended Personhood and Reciprocity in Oral Narratives on Forest Governance among the Tiriki in Vihiga, Western Kenya
Antony Osome, Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany

Tackling the Climate Crisis through Indigenous Livelihood Practices in Nigeria’s Oil-Extractive Communities
Abosede Omowumi Babatunde, University of Ilorin, Nigeria

The Pluriverse as an Ontological-Epistemological Approach to Multispecies Relations in Times of Socio-Environmental Crisis
Pedro Pablo Achondo Moya, MESH, University of Cologne, Germany

Ecologizing Bayanihan in Archipelagic Neighborhoods: Multispecies Care Amid Cascading Disasters in Philippine Climate Fiction
Mars Edwenson T. Briones, MESH, University of Cologne, Germany

Towards Pluriversal Imaginaries: Indigenous Knowledge, Ethics of Care, and Indian Literary Narratives
Payel Pal, The LNM Institute of Information Technology, Jaipur, India

Psychoactive Plants and the Pluriverse in Latin American Science Fiction
Bieke Willem, Romance Literature, University of Cologne, Germany

Contact, registration and more information:
Goutam Karmakar (goutamkarmakar@uohyd.ac.in)