Fernanda Munera-Parra

Doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the University of Oulu, Finland. My PhD takes as point of departure indigenous thinking to explore and develop plant-human educational relations grounded in the animated and relational aspects of the world. My doctoral thesis builds on an original one-year multi-site and online participatory research with 30 adults and their plant-teachers entitled “Growing as I am (GAIA): on the possibilities of plants as teachers.” My interests include multispecies participatory methods, education as healing, and human relations with an animated wider-than-human world.

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:

• Multispecies participatory action research.
• Human relations with an animated wider-than-human world.
• Multispecies education.
• Indigenist methodologies and thinking.
• Education as healing.