Unlearning nature \ A conversation with Banu Subramaniam and Connor Butler
- Lucía Ballesteros
- 6 days ago
- 14 min read
We tend to treat the categories we use to describe the world as natural facts. Native and foreign, male and female, natural and unnatural... these divisions are so ingrained in our language that it becomes easy to forget they are human-made.
The living world rarely conforms to such tidy distinctions. Species migrate and intermingle. Ecosystems overflow borders. Sex can be fluid, adaptive, and multiple.
In this conversation, Banu Subramaniam and Connor Butler explore how colonialism, scientific classification, and rigid social binaries have shaped the way we understand life on Earth. Moving between botanical naming systems, queer ecologies, and the politics of taxonomy, they examine how ideas presented as objective truths are often inseparable from histories of empire and cultural power.
If we start to question the boundaries we’ve inherited, what other ways of seeing become possible?
Connor Butler is an ecologist and science communicator based in London, working with insects, urban biodiversity, and the everyday nature often overlooked in cities.
With a background in biology and public engagement, including at Chelsea Physic Garden, his work explores how cultural biases shape the way we see the natural world. Through his queer ecology walks across the UK, he invites people to reconnect with the natural world through curiosity and observation, while also challenging what is considered “natural.”
Banu Subramaniam is a scholar, author, and professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College. Trained as an evolutionary biologist and plant scientist, her work focuses on the life sciences, particularly botany and evolutionary biology, and how ideas of gender, race, and colonial history shape the production and teaching of scientific knowledge.
She is the author of Ghost Stories for Darwin (2014), Holy Science (2019), and Botany of Empire (2024).
