Thank you to all those who submitted an abstract and/or image. We are currently reviewing submissions post-extended deadline, and now aim to get back to you by 13 August. The programme and registration information will follow shortly thereafter.
Call for Contributions
09-11 September 2025, Online (UK AM / AUS PM)
What is The Dose? The Dose is a three-day online symposium presented by Queen Mary University of London and the University of New South Wales School of Art and Design in Sydney. It builds on recent academic and artistic research in the Plant Humanities (the nexus of plant science and the arts) and aims to highlight and celebrate the boundary workings and storytelling of plant knowledge. It includes panel discussions, online image galleries, and a virtual printmaking workshop where participants will be sent a material packet ahead of time.
Why The Dose? From folklore and science, we learn that plants can cure or kill us—it’s a matter of dose. Folklore prefers affective approaches where plants are the protagonists of vibrant multispecies stories rooted in ancient myths and traditions. Medicine simplifies plant stories to deal with them practically in a solution-oriented manner. But how does the power of plants to kill and cure affect and shape the ways in which we, as people, have been building worlds with them? We are specifically interested in Indigenous and traditional plant knowledge, queer plant and non-academic praxes, such as apothecary plant tonic and tincture practices, to explore stories of life, death, the fragile cure-kill boundary of plant medicine and the concept of the dose. (Women with expert plant knowledge have conventionally been cast as witches—we also encourage submissions attending to these phobias and biases.)
Is this for you? We encourage submissions from artists, apothecarists, botanists, writers and theorists who will focus on one individual plant each.
How do I apply? You can propose a text of 1000 words, which will form part of a plenary discussion session. Alternatively, propose an image of an artwork to display on a dedicated online gallery. Both should engage with only one plant.
Your contribution should be inspired (but not limited) by the following set of questions:
- How do we get to know plants through poisons and antidotes?
- What are plants’ toxic traits? How can we deal with them if we are committed to remain in relationships with them?
- If poisons and antidotes are all about doses, how do we weigh the perfect dosage for plants and people to co-create the future together?
- How do plants’ poisons and antidotes make us dream/see differently with/thanks to them?
Please send your ideas or images to thedosesymposium@gmail.com by 21 July 2025. We will get back to you shortly after 04 August 2025.
The conference workshop, facilitated by Matthew Beach, will explore placed-based relationships with participants’ local plants by utilising cyanotype bleaching and toning practices. If you wish to take part, signup will be free, limited to 15 spaces and available as part of the symposium registration on Eventbrite once open.
The Dose is sponsored by Queen Mary University of London’s Forum on Decentring the Human.
Website banner imagery by Sadhbha Cockburn.