Fernanda Munera-Parra

My doctoral research advances animism as a theoretical and methodological direction for understanding the active role of plants in education and for learning to live sustainably with more-than-humans. My doctoral thesis, at the intersection of more-than-human approaches to education and critical plant studies, builds on a one-year multispecies participatory research where a group of adults aimed to relate with plants as person-teachers. My interests include animism as theory and practice and multispecies participatory methods.

My research is part of the project "HOMINGS - More than just human homes: Creating new storylines of co-habitation to drive everyday life sustainability transitions" (2024-2028) funded by the Research Council of Finland and led by Principal Investigator Pauliina Rautio.

I am a member of Animate, a transdisciplinary research collective that explores processes of becoming and being human with other species. Animate is mostly based at the General Education Unit at the Faculty of Education and Psychology of the University of Oulu. I am also affiliated with the University of Oulu’s research programme Biodiverse Anthropocenes.

Research interests:

• Animism.
• Multispecies participatory research.
• Transrational methods.
• More-than-human approaches to education.