ENGAGEMENT

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The biocultural objects collected by nineteenth-century botanist Richard Spruce in Amazonia are a unique point of reference for the useful plants, ethnobotany, and environmental history of the region. This remarkable collection, housed mainly at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the British Museum in London, incorporates Indigenous plant-based artefacts, detailed archival notes, and accompanying herbarium voucher collections. This talk focusses on an ongoing research programme – developed in collaboration with Brazilian and UK institutions – that aims to share scientific and Indigenous traditional knowledge, make biocultural collections and associated data accessible online and strengthen the capacity of Indigenous communities in Northwest Amazonia for autonomous research into material culture, plant use and conservation. I will discuss the benefits and challenges that working with biocultural heritage brings to new co-curatorial practices with Indigenous communities today.

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Prof. Luciana Martins is a Professor of Latin American Visual Cultures, Co-Director of the Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS), and Assistant Dean for Research in the School of Arts at Birkbeck, University of London. She is also a Visiting Researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Her research considers the role of visual and material culture in the scientific exploration of Latin America. She has recently completed a Brazil-UK collaborative pilot study with Kew on the biocultural collections of Richard Spruce, supported by the British Academy and is currently working on a monograph entitled Drawing Together: The Visual Archive of Expeditionary Travel, supported by the Leverhulme Trust.

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