Fernanda Munera-Parra

Anthropologist and MSc in Global Studies. Alongside my academic training, I have studied and taught transrational approaches to knowledge (e.g. intuitive non-verbal or non-physical communication and knowing) since 2016 and animist human-more-than-human relations since 2022.

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 doctoral research is supervised by Professor Pauliina Rautio in collaboration with Professor Roger Norum (second supervisor). I also count with the advisory support of the members of my doctoral follow-up group, Emeritus Professor Graham Harvey (Open University), Associate Professor Vanessa Wijngaarden (University of Liège) and Associate Professor Jani Pulkki (University of Oulu).

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 programmes Biodiverse Anthropocenes and SAFIRE - Safeguarding biodiversity through interdisciplinary research on habitat restoration.

Research interests:

• Animism.
• Multispecies participatory research.
• Transrational methods (e.g. dreaming and intuitive non-verbal or non-physical communication and knowing).
• More-than-human approaches to education.