Research projects

A new interdisciplinary project led by Meredith C. Schuman at University of Zurich and Christopher L. Salter at the Zurich University of the Arts launched in June 2026. With funding from the John Templeton Foundation, an interdisciplinary research team investigates plant agency from scientific, philosophical and artistic perspectives.

Agency – the capacity to act – fundamentally shapes how we understand and relate to other beings and the world around us. Over the next two years, this project will bring together perspectives from plant biology, ecology, Earth system science, social sciences, philosophy, arts and design. Rather than assuming a single definition of agency, the team will develop a comparative framework that examines characteristics associated with agency in plants, animals, humans and even machines. These may include perception, communication, decision-making, goal-directedness, learning, memory and social networking.

The project is structured around three closely connected areas of work: framework building, framework testing and framework implementation. The researchers will establish an interdisciplinary scientific framework for understanding plant agency and will translate this framework into testable hypotheses and experimental approaches. Pilot experiments will investigate, for example, how plants coordinate different modules such as roots, leaves and shoots; how they recognize and interact with neighbouring plants; and how they respond to organisms such as microbes, herbivores and pollinators. The aim is not to anthropomorphise plants, but to establish rigorous criteria for determining what forms of agency-related traits can actually be observed and measured.

Making plant agency tangible

A particularly innovative part of Engaging Plants connects fundamental research with art, experience design, and public engagement. The project will explore how plant responses can become directly perceptible through interactive environments. Instead of simply visualising data, the aim is to create an immersive environment in which humans experience plant agency. In this way, participants would no longer be passive observers but become part of a dynamic plant–human system.

The current project will develop and test the scientific and technical foundations for such public experiments. It will thereby prepare the ground for future larger-scale immersive installations in which visitors can investigate plant agency through direct, embodied interaction.

A genuinely interdisciplinary collaboration

The project brings together the Zurich-Basel Plant Science Center (PSC) and researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) with expertise from the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and international collaborators. The team combines plant biology and ecology with Earth system science, social sciences and humanities, experimental design, sensing technologies, interaction and enactive design, and science communication.

Project coordination is led by Prof. Meredith C. Schuman (UZH) and Dr. Manuela Dahinden (PSC). Meredith leads the development and experimental testing of the scientific framework, together with Dr. Sofia van Moorsel, Camille Schneiter and Prof. em. Bernhard Schmid. Prof. Christopher L. Salter (ZHdK) leads the public-experiment and experiential-design component, with Dr. Rasa Smite contributing to its development and implementation. Prof. em. Ghassem R. Asrar contributes to the experimental framework, while PD Dr. Felix Morsdorf and Toja Guerra support pilot testing.

This combination of expertise is central to the project: questions of agency cannot be answered by biology, philosophy or the arts alone. Instead, Engaging Plants creates a shared space in which conceptual thinking, empirical experimentation and embodied experience can inform one another.

Towards a new understanding of living systems

Ultimately, Engaging Plants aims to establish scientifically credible and broadly applicable criteria for evaluating plant agency. By shifting attention from plants as organisms that merely adapt passively to their surroundings towards plants as living systems that actively respond to and shape their environments, the project could influence thinking far beyond plant science.

Its framework may contribute to discussions in ecology and evolutionary biology, but also to debates about collective and network agency, environmental policy and even artificial intelligence. Most importantly, it invites us to reconsider a deceptively simple question: What does it actually mean to act – and how many different forms can agency take?

contact at the PSC: Manuela Dahinden

The National Research Programme NRP 82 has started with 15 transdisciplinary projects that aim to understand biodiversity and ecosystem services, and to develop practical solutions for their conservation and sustainable use.

We highlight here one project with the PSC as a partner for the Science and Policy Dialogue formats.

As the climate continues to warm, mountain species are under increasing pressure to shift to higher elevations where conditions are cooler and more suitable for them. However, most species are not moving fast enough, and some rare species are threatened with local extinction because they are stuck in habitats that are becoming increasingly inhospitable. Conservation in Switzerland focuses on in situ measures: protecting threatened species where they currently occur. An additional tool is assisted migration - translocating species into habitats that are now climatically suitable for them, but which they are unable to reach on their own. This has until recently been considered a last resort and has only rarely been implemented in a conservation context anywhere in the world, but is already the recommended conservation strategy for several species in Switzerland. Given the pace of climate warming, even species that are not yet considered endangered may, in the long run, require assisted migration if they are to survive in the wild.

In this NRP 82 project, we are working to establish Switzerland’s first assisted migration programme for mountain plants. This transdisciplinary project is a collaboration between biodiversity researchers, policymakers, conservation practitioners, and industry. Our vision is a Swiss landscape where assisted migration becomes part of a diverse toolkit that helps species to adapt to climate change, conserving both biodiversity and the many benefits it provides to people.

Learn more about the research questions addressed and the project partners in the PSC Newsletter No.49, Spring 2026.

contact at the PSC: Melanie Paschke