Natures in Translation: AI, Ethics and Environmental Conservation

Natures in Translation: AI, Ethics and Environmental Conservation is an interdisciplinary academic conference at Lancaster University on 1–2 October 2026, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BRAID programme. It grows out of a research project on AI, ethics and the future of interspecies dialogue, and asks a pointed question: as AI initiatives such as the Earth Species Project and the Cetacean Translation Initiative promise to translate animal and plant communication into human language, who gets to speak on behalf of the more-than-human world?

The programme convenes scholars and practitioners from translation studies, animal-behaviour science, philosophy, law, literature, computer science, social science and the digital humanities to weigh the ethical implications of AI-assisted translation for conservation and multispecies justice. Sessions span the science and ethics of interspecies communication, critical perspectives on the data extraction and algorithmic logics behind these technologies, Indigenous and decolonial approaches, creative and arts-based methods, and conservation policy and practice. Confirmed keynote speakers include Professor Ursula K. Heise (UCLA), Dr Eva Meijer, Professor César Rodríguez-Garavito (NYU) and Professor Şebnem Susam-Saraeva (Edinburgh), with a keynote performance by Khairani Barokka. For attendees from across the humanities, sciences and conservation, it offers a rare, genuinely cross-disciplinary space to interrogate the promises and risks of generative AI applied to the natural world.