The Project

Cross-cultural Histories of Tropical Botany in Latin America is originally funded by an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award to develop a collaboration between Birkbeck College, University of London and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

Pottery

Objects from the Economic Botany Collection, Kew collected by Im Thurn in Guyana (Image: RBG Kew)

The doctoral student Sara Albuquerque is developing her PhD dissertation supervised by Dr Luciana Martins (Birkbeck) and Christopher Mills (Kew) with additional funding from the Portuguese foundation FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia).

This research has a crucial methodological component, involving work across different kinds of materials and collections, from artefacts and herbarium specimens to manuscripts and published works. The project is designed to stimulate new ways of thinking about the botanical archive which will also have practical applications within the educational and exhibition programmes of Kew and other bodies.