Unleashing and confronting stories of Bildung: Remediations of cultural-natural heritage

As Londa Schiebinger and other historians of science have shown, the history of botany is also the (hi)story of the indivisibility of political, cultural and economic motivations in the world of science. These histories tend to get lost, however, in the contemporary cultural and scientific communication of botanical artefacts. This conference seeks to foreground the interrelations between cultural and scientific histories of natural history collections, and the necessity of bridging the “two cultures” that often keep them separate.

This conference is devoted to looking at the role of botanical gardens in a digital age and asks: How can digitization of plant collections ensure new access points to science, bring new cultural historical knowledge to life, and illuminate otherwise hidden plant collections? How can botanical gardens communicate these collections, not only as hard science, but also as cultural constellations that relate to colonialism and gender politics as well as pose new questions to data visualization and new global challenges? How can we think about current botanizing as a form of environmental and cultural Bildung? And what are the cultural trajectories of today’s citizen science practices?

All are welcome but registration is required.

Read the programme and how to register here. 

The Conference is supported by The Velux Foundation