Law School

People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series

The People, Plants, and the Law lecture series explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.

Today people engage with and relate to plants in diverse and sometimes divergent ways. Seeds—and the plants that they produce—may be receptacles of memory, sacred forms of sustenance, or sites of resistance in struggles over food sovereignty. Simultaneously, they may be repositories of gene sequences, Indigenous knowledge, bulk commodities, or key components of economic development projects and food security programs.

This lecture series explores the special role of the law in shaping these different engagements, whether in farmers’ fields, scientific laboratories, international markets, or elsewhere.

Note that all dates and times displayed are in Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST).

Contacts

Berris Charnley
Carol Ballard
Country scene with a lake

WIPO Treaty on TKGR 2024: Constructing Guidelines for Disclosure and ABS

10 December 2024 6:00pm–7:00pm
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Professor Suthersanen holds a Chair in Global Intellectual Property Law and was the Director of the Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute until 2024
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People-Plant Interrelationships and the Law – Ethnobiology and Biocultural Ethics

23 October 2024 9:00am
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Recognizing the vital role that diversity has in our future on earth necessarily invites complexities into conversations about entanglements of “people, plants and the law.”
Image of green leaf with some water on top

People, Plants, and the Law Conference

25 October 2023 9:00am–4:30pm
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Join us for the People, Plants, and the Law one-day conference explores the legal and lively entanglements of human and botanical worlds.
The Beyond Intellectual Property Moment in Historical Context

The Beyond Intellectual Property Moment in Historical Context

7 June 2023 4:00pm–5:00pm
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Presented by Professor Graham Dutfield from the University of Leeds.

Seeds

Seeds as Deep Time Technologies

2 May 2023 9:00am–10:00am
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Presented by Associate Professor Courtney Fullilove from Wesleyan University. This talk aims to unite diverse insights in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences by theorizing seeds as deep time technologies.

A peach cut in half displaying the seed

Reconsidering Japan’s Plant Patent Movement: National histories, Colonial Legacies, and Transpacific Dynamics

4 April 2023 2:30pm–3:30pm
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Join Senior Lecturer Kjell Ericson from Kyoto University as he contextualizes the activities of the plant patent movement that breeders and propagators joined.


Seedling growing in dirt

35 years in defence of Seed Freedom

7 March 2023 2:30pm–3:30pm
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Dr Vandana Shiva joins us in our first 2023 instalment of the People, Plants and the Law lecture series where she will discuss people, plants and Intellectual Property Law, specially patents and breeders rights.
Boab (Baobab) Tree Vector Painting. Aboriginal art vector background.

Biocultural Rights, Indigenous Peoples, and Local Communities: Protecting Culture and the Environment

29 November 2022 4:00pm–5:30pm
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Biocultural community protocols are broadly understood as instruments that set out terms and conditions for the access and use of resources and knowledge owned and controlled by Indigenous and local communities. These protocols are rooted in the customary norms, values, and laws that the relevant communities recognise for the governance of their biological and cultural resources and knowledge.
stark fruit trees ad

Novelties, Frauds, and Protections: The Fruit Business in Nineteenth-Century America

18 October 2022 9:00am–10:00am
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Professor Daniel Kevles discusses the history of commercial plant nurseries and how the market sought to protect their investments in the creation or acquisition of novelties and how to prevent cheats from offering fraudulent plants under branded names.
monochrome scanned picture of 2 plastic plants

Artificial by Nature: Plastic Flowers as Intangible Properties

23 August 2022 5:00pm
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Dr Jose Bellido discusses how significant the controversies concerning the copyright of plastic plants were in addressing the unstable distinction between the natural and the artificial, particularly when the subsistence of copyright was at stake.
An illustration based on aboriginal style of background depicting nature.

Supporting Indigenous Data: Introducing Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels

17 May 2022 9:00am
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Associate Professor Jane Anderson and Associate Professor Maui Hudson discusses the concerns over Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Indigenous rights under the Nagoya Protocol underpinning the development and application of Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural Labels/Notices.
seeds in bags

Stand and Deliver: Biopiracy, Law, and the Balkanization of the Genescape

22 February 2022 9:00am–10:00am
 
in People, Plants and the Law Online Lecture Series
Professor Jack Kloppenburg joins us in our first instalment of the People, Plants and the Law lecture series where he will discuss how intellectual property and contract law globally facilitate the profitability of the international seed trade.