Foundations and Fluidity
20th Anniversary Conference of the
International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (ISSRNC)
October 10-14, 2026 | Casa Artom, Venice, Italy
Foundations and Fluidity will mark the 20th anniversary of the International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture (ISSRNC)—a milestone not only for the Society but also for the emerging field of Religion and Nature/Ecology. Over the past two decades, this field has matured into a vibrant area of interdisciplinary scholarship, with several graduate programs now training researchers and scholars. Our conferences provide essential spaces for these scholars to collaborate, build networks, and workshop their research.
Conference Details & Registration
We’re looking forward to seeing everyone in October of 2026 at our next ISSRNC conference, which will take place at Casa Artom in Venice, Italy. You can find all of the latest conference details and updates below.
2026 Conference Info
Keynote Speakers
 Photo credit: Sara Penrhyn Jones |
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| Catherine (Kate) Rigby Director, Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities University of Cologne |
Allison Carruth Professor, Effron Center for the Study of America and the High Meadows Environmental Institute, Associated faculty, Department of English, Princeton University |
Dr. Kate Rigby (Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities) is Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Environmental Humanities at the University of Cologne, where she leads a research hub for Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities, and visiting scholar in the Research Centre for Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental literary, philosophical, historical and religious studies, with a specialist interest in European Romanticism, ecopoetics, multispecies studies, disaster studies, and Australian studies. She was the inaugural President of the Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture (Australia-New Zealand), and the founding Director of the
Australia-Pacific Forum on Religion and Ecology. A founding co-editor of the journal Philosophy Activism Nature, she also co-edited the University Press of Virginia series, Under the Sign of Nature, and her books include Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism (2004), Dancing with Disaster: Environmental Histories, Narratives, and Ethics for Perilous Times (2015), Reclaiming Romanticism: Towards an Ecopoetics of Decolonization (2020) and Meditations on Creation in an Era of Extinction (2023).
Dr. Allison Carruth is on the faculty at Princeton University, where she is a professor in the Effron Center for the Study of America and the High Meadows Environmental Institute. At Princeton, she directs the Program in Environmental Studies and leads Blue Lab, an environmental media and storytelling studio. Her research and teaching areas include climate storytelling, environmental art and narrative, contemporary food movements and the evolving relationships between technology and environmentalism in American culture.
Her fields of research and teaching encompass the environmental humanities, ecomedia and science and technology studies. Over the past fifteen years, her scholarship and creative practice have aimed to bridge the work of environmental imagination and that of the natural sciences. From 2016-2020, she was the founding faculty director of UCLA’s Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies (LENS). While leading LENS, she was an executive producer of a documentary series that produced films and web stories about L.A. environmental challenges. The series was developed in partnership with KCET/ PBS SoCal, the country’s largest public media outlet.
She is the author of three books: Global Appetites: American Power and the Literature of Food (Cambridge UP 2013); Literature and Food Studies, with Amy L. Tigner (Routledge 2018); and Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech (University of Chicago Press 2025).
