Animate Earth
Annual Confluence 2025
Sentience and Sapience
Hosted by Rachel Fleming & Angharad Wynne
With Monica Gagliano, Jay Griffiths, Vanessa Wijngaarden, César Rodríguez-Garavito,
David Gruber and Patrick MacManaway
An Invitation
In this recording of our fourth Animate Earth Confluence we look at the evidence for intelligence, communication, patterns and relationships in nature. We are joined by leading scientists and plant and animal communicators across the world who discuss their findings and share with us some of the practices they use for conversation with the other-than-human world.
Friends & Guest Speakers
This event is hosted by Rachel Fleming and Angharad Wynne with guest speakers Monica Gagliano, Jay Griffiths, Vanessa Wijngaarden, César Rodríguez-Garavito, David Gruber and Patrick MacManaway.
Monica Gagliano
Monica Gagliano is an ecologist known for her research on plant intelligence. Gagliano is a Research Associate Professor in the field of evolutionary ecology at Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia, where she directs the Biological Intelligence lab. She is a former fellow of the Australian Research Council.
Jay Griffiths
Jay Griffiths is a British writer and author of Wild: An Elemental Journey, Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time, Anarchipelago, A Love Letter from a Stray Moon, Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape and Tristimania: A Diary of Manic Depression.
Vanessa Wijngaarden
Dr. Vanessa Wijngaarden is a research professor at the University of Liège and senior research associate at the University of Johannesburg, with a background in social anthropology and political science. She works on ‘othering’, multivocality in academia, and human-animal relationships, aiming to bridge different worlds. With a passion for reflexive approaches, extensive fieldwork and creative research dissemination, she is working on an ERC consolidator project regarding intuitive interspecies
César Rodríguez-Garavito
César Rodríguez-Garavito is an Earth rights scholar, field lawyer, and founding director of the MOTH (More-Than-Human Life) Program at NYU School of Law. He is a Professor of Law and Director of the Earth Rights Research & Action (TERRA) Clinic at NYU. César’s work has advanced new ideas and legal actions worldwide on issues such as climate justice, Indigenous rights, and what he proposes to call “more-than-human rights” (rights of nature). His contributions to Earth rights have been recognized with a More-Than-Human Fellowship by the London Design Museum and a spot in the UN Museum’s Top 10 Culture for Impact 2024 List.
David Gruber
Marine biologist, ocean explorer and professor David Gruber provides a wealth of new insights into a secret “language” of the shining colors and sounds that help many marine creatures communicate, interact and avoid enemies. His interdisciplinary research builds bridges between marine biology, biophysics, climate science and animal communication while his inventions deploy groundbreaking technology to help humans view the underwater world from the perspective of those who call it home.
Gruber recently assembled the scientific team for Project CETI, a nonprofit organization and 2020 Audacious Project that is applying advanced machine learning and non-invasive robotics to listen to and translate the communication of whales.
Patrick MacManaway
Patrick, otherwise known as ‘The Land Whisperer’ is a third generation practitioner of psychic and healing arts, working with farmers, land stewards, individuals and organisations all over the world. His intention is to bring grace and restore balance in natural systems, improving productivity and harmonious relationship between humans and places. He is a past president of the British Society of Dowsers, holds a degree in Medicine from Edinburgh University in his native Scotland and has taken apprenticeships in both Western and Eastern approaches to traditional Geomancy and working with landscape energy.
Angharad Wynne
Angharad teaches from the old Brythonic tradition of the British Isles, the spirit ways of the ancestors of this land, and how we can recover and remember them to help us restore balance in ourselves and with the world around us.
Rachel Fleming
Rachel has worked with animist education for many years, designing and delivering educational programmes for Schumacher College, University of Wales Trinity St Davids, Lampeter and Embercombe, with a focus on the meeting point between ecology and ‘spirituality’.