The beginning of the project was dedicated to the integration of the research team within the project and the Host Institution (HI); to establishing a working partnership with members of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC); to creating a network of project partners, including a group of affiliated researchers and of partner institutions that continues to expand as the project progresses; to the organization of several events, including major colloquia on Vegetal Humanities in the Amazon (October 2022), Amazonian Futurisms: More than Human Imaginaries (July 2023) and Monocultures: Eco-Cultural Perspectives (February 2024), that brought together, beyond core team members, the SAC and several affiliated researchers; to the gathering of sources and to the dissemination of preliminary project results.
A major research achievement in the first 30 months of the proejct was the gathering of sources and the development of the concept of zoophytography, together with an analysis of the inscriptio of animals and plants in Amazonian cultural productions, based on the examination of the sources gathered, as well as the publication of preliminary research results. Team members have undertaken research in libraries and archives in South America, North American and in Europe, including the Amazonian Library of Iquitos (Peru), the Amazon Library in Leticia (Colombia), the Goeldi Museum (Brazil), the Public Archive of the State of Pará (Brazil), the Library of Congress (USA), the National Library (Portugal) and the National Library (France), as well as field work in Ecuador, Peru and Brazil to gather materials on plants and animals in Amazonian thought and cultural productions by Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. In addition, the team has gathered and analyzed a comprehensive list of theoretical sources on the issue of plant and animal inscription in human cultural productions.
Based upon the sources gathered, the PI has written several published and forthcoming essays on zoophytography, including “Amazonian Zoophytography: Ecopoetic Writing with Animals and Plants,” published in the Routledge Companion to Ecopetics (2023) and “More than Human Indigenous Poetry from the Amazon: Márcia Kambeba’s Zoophytography,” forthcoming in a special issue of Portuguese Studies on “Luso-Ecologies” (2025) and is currently working on the monograph Zoophytography: Animals and Plants in Amazonian Cultural Productions (forthcoming with The University Press of Florida). Project team members have published over 20 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and other academic essays over the past 30 months.
Another major achievement has been the successful dissemination of project research results. Over the past 30 months, project team members have given over 90 talks in conferences, colloquia, workshops and other academic venues throughout South and North America, in Europe and in the Middle East, have organized over 30 academic and dissemination events, as well as several training events, and have participated in the CES goes to school research dissemination program for Portuguese school children. The team has coordinated five short fiction and documentary films, over 10 interviews with experts in Amazonia and has made over 30 academic talks organized by the project available in ECO’s website.
