The Centre’s events programme includes regular seminars and workshops convened by members, and special lectures, including the Cosgrove Lecture Series. On this page we feature current events, including forthcoming and recent events – for booking details, see the links under individual events below. Further information on past events organised by the Centre since 2018 is available from the Centre Newsletters
Current Events
28 May 2024 - 7th Cosgrove Lecture by Prof Judith Carney (UCLA)
Planting Resistance: Botanical Legacies of the African Diaspora
Tuesday 28 May 2024, Kew Gardens, 6pm, in collaboration with the British Academy
In the 21st century, the expansion of large-scale industrial agriculture across tropical landscapes in the Americas is threatening an Afrodescendant food system that has long prioritized agro-biodiversity and agroecological practices. These practices emerged during the plantation era of transatlantic slavery, when the enslaved leveraged subsistence precarity for the right to food plots, independent production, and partial autonomy over their labour. Historical continuities connect this much-ignored food system to agricultural practices maintained to this day in many Afrodescendant farming communities. Places exemplified by the plants, cultural knowledge, and social memories of these communities can be considered biocultural refugia - extending a concept from European heritage landscapes to tropical environments in the Americas.
This lecture is a free event, open to all.
For further details and to reserve your place, see the booking link
9 May 2024 - Plant Humanities Lecture by Dr Yota Batsaki (Dumbarton Oaks)
Cultivating the Plant Humanities
Thursday 9 May 2024, Royal Holloway, Founders Lecture Theatre, 5:30pm
Dr Yota Batsaki is the Executive Director of Dumbarton Oaks, a Harvard University research centre, museum and historic garden located in Washington DC. Her talk will describe the Plant Humanities Initiative at Dumbarton Oaks as an example of how plant-focused projects and collections can stimulate research and public communication around humans, culture, and the environment.
This lecture is a free event organised by the Centre for GeoHumanities, and open to all.
To reserve your place, see the booking link
12 March 2024 - GeoHumanities Meets Victorian Studies
12 March 2024 - GeoHumanities Meets Victorian Studies
Tuesday 12 March 2024, Senate House Room 104, 2:00pm
This is a work-in-progress event in the Landscape Surgery series for postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers organised between the Centre for GeoHumanities and Royal Holloway’s Centre for Victorian Studies. The event is themed around mutual interests in the environmental humanities with four contributions by current and former researchers in Geography and English Departments arranged under the titles ‘Paper Worlds’ and ‘Planetary Ecologies’. The speakers are Yasmin Akhter (Royal Holloway), Frankie Kubicki (Dickens Museum), Briony Wickes (Royal Holloway) and Bergit Arends (Courtauld Institute).
