Call for Papers – Taking Root: Conserving Trees and/as Heritage
Date: 29–30 October 2026
Location: University of Vienna
While in recent years, the rhizomal networks of fungi have inspired heritage researchers seeking to engage with the entanglements of their subject, before then, it was trees that dominated as the totemic natural metaphor for thinking and writing about heritage. Yet despite the low-hanging fruit of easy references to ‘deep roots’, ‘solid trunks’ and ‘flowering branches’ indicating everything from intergenerational transmission, to the health of a particular form of heritage, we have found little by way of a direct exploration of trees as both subjects and objects of heritage, and how this framing impacts their conservation. In this conference, we invite papers that reconsider and reposition trees as heritage in a variety of frames and scales, including:
Monuments. Individual trees as monuments (e.g., Guernica tree, Sycamore gap, memorial trees)
Materiality. Conserving tree species (e.g., baobabs, eucalyptus, oak trees, olive trees, etc.) and types of wood as heritage
Forests. Groups of trees as/and heritage (e.g., spirit forests, forest-based heritage practices, women’s forests)
Metaphors. Thinking with trees, their microcosms and entangled root systems, trees as metaphors for thinking about heritage and conservation
Intersections. Trees and conservation at the intersection of nature, culture, and art.
Violence. Ecocide, ethnocide, genocide and the uprooting of trees
We also invite papers that seek to disrupt binary categorisations of nature/culture and consider the integrated needs as they relate to issues of conservation, management, and theorisation of trees and/as heritage. On this note, we ask that papers engage directly with overlaps between trees/heritage/conservation/art. We welcome multidisciplinary approaches and also encourage submissions for both traditional and non-traditional conference formats.
Proposals of no more than 300 words should be sent to Alisa Santikarn (alisa.santikarn@univie.ac.at) by 30 March 2026. Decisions will be sent in April.
This conference is organised as part of the ERC-funded Global Conservation: Histories and Theories project at the University of Vienna, in collaboration with the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre at the University of Cambridge.
The ERC-Project organizing this event is funded by the European Union under the Grant Agreement Nr. 101087659. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
