ARLG Eastern Lunchtime Webinar: Recordkeeping and Knowledge Control at Kew Gardens as Instrument and Legacy of the British Imperial Project

ARLG Eastern are proud to announce a series of lunchtime webinars, where active researchers in the Library & Information Science (LIS) field discuss some of their work, in an informal environment. 

These webinars are hosted on MS Teams and there will be an opportunity for questions at the end.

Date: 1st December 12.30-13.00 on MS Teams

Presenter: Emily Hughes

Abstract:

Despite research in recent years of the connection between Kew Gardens and the British Empire, little attention has been turned towards the records kept of it. Where scholars have considered the connections between plants and empire from a botanical, economic, or historic perspective, my research seeks to draw new connections between the materiality of botanical archives and imperial frameworks. Namely, I aim to study what administration can tell us about the role of botany within the British Empire, and what a cross-examination of the Kew Gardens archive can reveal about state use of botany for imperial purposes. I turn my attention towards material culture and explore how the field of botanical history and science has been shaped by those who had influence over the access and the flow of information, and how the history of botany has been influenced by colonial administrative decisions taken in the archive.

Bio:

Emily Hughes is a 3rd year PhD student working collaboratively with University College London (UCL) and Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. A trained archivist, her research focuses on the archive at Kew gardens and the relationship between imperialism and knowledge of nature.