JUST THE TONIC The true story of how the Gin & Tonic came to be - featuring the history of malaria, botany of quinine, origins of tonic water and evolution of the G&T, in 20,000 words and 100 illustrations. At the printer - out in October 2019 Other news 21-22 September 2019 Open House London - a rare opportunity to see inside Kew's original Museum of Economic Botany. Lots of objects, info and researchers to meet. 10am-4pm each day, free entry. 9-10 May. Collections in Circulation: Mobile Museum Conference. At Kew. 17 February. Uploaded 1997 PhD thesis, & 2018 paper on reference collections. 2018 7 December. Conference: Recent advances in barkcloth conservation. At Kew. 29 October. Talk. The Mobile Museum: botanical exchanges between the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Australia. 6pm, Woolnough Lecture Theatre, Geology Building, University of Western Australia. 5 September. Obituary of Gordon Hillman in Nature Plants (& earlier, unsigned, in The Times) August. New Publications on Helicteres, Richard Spruce, Victorian Jamaica 12 January. Gallery tour of Richard Spruce Amazon rainforest exhibition, Shirley Sherwood Gallery, midday. Free (included in Kew admission) but please book ahead at 020 8332 3622 or email shirleysherwoodgallery@kew.org 10 January. Talk: Festive Botany: plants of Christmas and New Year. 8pm, Greeno Centre, Shepperton (SW London). 5 January. Research Pages updated. 2017 24 November-18 December: Fieldwork in Oahu, Hawaii, with Dr Andy Mills and the Situating Tapa project. 22 November. Talk: Silk at Kew. At Silk Unravelled 23 October. Appointed Visiting Professor in the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London. 11 October. Talk: with Kim Walker A Tale of Two Cities: Assembling Cinchona Bark Collections in Leiden and London. UCL Spices symposium 10 October. Hosting Annual Ethnobotany Lecture at Kew. 7 October - 11 March. Two exhibitions in the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew: Plantae Amazonicae and Life in Death. Both feature Economic Botany specimens. September: Blog post Botanical Wonders in Warrington August. New manual on ethnobotany: Manual de Etnobotânica: Plantas, artefatos e Conhecimentos Indígenas August. New working paper out from Mobile Museum project: The Economic Botany Collection at Kew: Analysis of Accessions Data Earlier news |
I work at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, as Senior Research Leader for Economic Botany and curator of the Economic Botany Collection (EBC) and am a Visiting Professor in the Department of Geography, Royal Holloway - University of London. As the photograph above hints, the EBC is extraordinarily varied in its holdings, aspiring to represent all uses of all plants in all places. While it might never have quite completed that task, the efforts of curators and collectors since 1847 make the EBC a wonderfully rich resource for research and teaching on many aspects of botany, history, anthropology and art and design. After a decade working in it, I feel I have barely scratched the surface. This website allows me to talk about my work at greater length than on Kew's official site (here is my Kew page), but readers will probably find it useful to see the official EBC pages. Above all, I hope these pages will encourage students and other researchers interested in using the EBC to contact me to discuss how we can work together. |
Mark Nesbitt - ethnobotanist & curator
