This online talk is now fully booked.

The Experimental School of Urban Ecologies, Rights for Weeds, and the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve are delighted to welcome Dr. Banu Subramaniam for an online lecture. We are thrilled to open this lecture out to members of our wider community. 

Dr. Subramaniam is this year’s third guest lecturer for the Foraging and Land Stewardship course. Previous lecturers have included Nadia Sheikh and Mo Wilde. 

Professor Subramaniam will be speaking about the colonial legacies of Botany and Taxonomy, and how they've shaped the way that we relate to our ecosystems. As foragers, we're in a unique position to engage with these disciplines on our own terms - questioning their inherited hierarchies and assumptions, and expanding what plant-knowing can look like. We hope that this talk will be an invitation to do exactly that.

Bio:

Banu Subramaniam is an interdisciplinary scholar, trained as an evolutionary biologist and plant scientist. Banu’s current research rethinks the field and practice of botany in relation to histories of colonialism and xenophobia and explores the wide travels of scientific theories, ideas, and concepts as they relate to migration and invasive species. Author of ‘Botany of Empire’ (2024), ‘Holy Science’ (2019) and ‘Ghost Stories for Darwin’ (2014), Banu is currently the Luella LaMer Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Wellesley College.