CFP History and Plant Sciences-Interdisciplinary Approaches

Call for Papers

History and Plant Sciences: Interdisciplinary Approaches

Workshop – Angers (France) – December 8-9, 2014

Organisers : Cristiana Oghina-Pavie & Stéphane Tirard

Plants have double historicity: on the one hand due to their biological history (evolution, reproductive cycle, etc.), on the other hand due to their human history (botanical studies, selection, cultivation practices, usage, etc.). These legitimate interdisciplinary approaches  take into account both the biological and the human history of plants.
We propose a two-day workshop conducive to analysis of interdisciplinarity at work in research that crosses the historical approach and the experimental plant sciences (genetics, physiology, pathology, systematics, study of the evolution, etc.). Indeed, interdiscplinarity develops a complex interaction between these disciplines and raises methodological and epistemological questions.

We welcome papers that are, preferably, jointly submitted by a historian and a biologist.

It will be interesting for each intervention to be structured around four themes:

1) Subject. How do interdisciplinary issues emerge and develop in plant sciences? Why do history and biology work together? Why should one team depart from the traditional disciplinary approach?

2) Method. How is dialogue established between historians and biologists? Do they have a common language? What archives does one use? How does one formalize and combine data? What are the obstacles, what are the difficulties?

3) Results. What favours more interdisciplinary research? How do peers receive interdisciplinarity? How and where does one publish results? What follows?

4) Epistemology. What status do plants have in these approaches: object or archive?


These questions are, of course, incentives and non-restrictive. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers interested in an interdisciplinary approach to plant crossing history and experimental sciences. Colleagues working with similar methodologies in microbiology and animal biology will be invited to this workshop with the aim to open comparative perspectives.


Submissions for 30-45 minute papers should be sent to: cristiana.pavie@univ-angers.fr and they should include abstracts (300-500 words) and a short bio-bibliographical notice of authors.
Deadline for submission: September 6, 2014

Notification of acceptance: September 15, 2014