MOTH Festival of Ideas: Interdisciplinary Perspectives for Earthly Flourishing
The living world is stitched together by a diversity of beings whose rich and complex interactions define its everyday drama. Humans—despite their disproportionate capacity to modify the living world—comprise only a small part of this vast web of relations. Yet, anthropocentrism—the systematic centering of human beings—has been a hallmark of much of academia, legal practice, and culture for decades.
That, however, is changing. Practitioners and scholars from a wide range of disciplines—from law and philosophy to anthropology to design and well beyond—are pursuing efforts to bring the more-than-human world into the ambit of moral, legal, and social concern.
The More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Festival of Ideas is dedicated to exploring this rich and rapidly evolving terrain of practice. Unfolding over three days—from March 12th to 14th, 2025—at NYU Law, the MOTH Festival of Ideas will feature leading thinkers and doers working to advance the rights, interests, and well-being of nonhumans, humans, and the web of life that sustains us all.
The mornings of each day of the Festival will be dedicated to a closed-door academic conference which will examine philosophical, scientific, legal, and cultural perspectives on more-than-human rights and other ecocentric paradigms.
The afternoons of each day of the Festival will be open to the public, with tickets available for purchase. With interdisciplinarity at its heart, the Festival will include keynote talks, interviews, book launches, and art performances of various kinds.
Confirmed speakers and presenters include:
* Christine Winter: Senior Lecturer in environmental, climate change, multispecies, and Indigenous politics at the University of Otago (New Zealand).
* David Gruber: Marine biologist & Founder & President of Project CETI, an interdisciplinary scientific organization that uses advanced robotics and applied computer sciences to listen to and translate sperm whale communications.
* Dylan McGarry: Co-director of One Ocean Hub and a founding member of Empatheatre.
* Elena Landinez: interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the relationship between the human and more-than-human.
* Eliana Hernández-Pachón: writer and educator whose book, The Brush, received the Colombia National Poetry Prize.
* Elisa Morgera: UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights and Professor of Global Environmental Law at the University of Strathclyde.
* Erin Robinsong: poet, interdisciplinary artist, and author of Rag Cosmology and Wet Dream.
* Eulalia Yagarí: Leader of the Embera-Chamí, popular educator, and former assemblywoman at the Antioquia Assembly (Colombia).
* Jonathan Watts: Journalist, global environment editor at The Guardian, and co-founder of Sumaúma.com, a Nature-centered trilingual newsletter and website that aims to amplify human and more-than-human forest voices.
* José Gualinga: Former Tayak Apu (president) of the Sarayaku Indigenous People and current advisor to the Tayjasaruta (Sarayaku Governing Council); spearheaded the development of the Kawsak Sacha Initiative.
* Merlin Sheldrake: Biologist and author of the best-selling book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures.
* Shaunak Sen: director of All That Breathes, Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Eye award for the best documentary at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival.
The Festival will conclude with a concert by musician and field recordist Cosmo Sheldrake.
You can attend the public portions of the Festival by purchasing a ticket for one, two, or all three days of the Festival.
For inquiries about the festival of ideas or the More Than Human Life Project, please contact Carlos Andrés Baquero-Díaz (cbd311@nyu.edu) and Jacqueline Gallant (jbg445@nyu.edu).