Botanic Futures
Researching and Curating Colonial Entanglements and Biodiversity Conservation in Botanic Gardens
Winter Semester 2024/25
Photo by Julia Binter, 2023
By Jun.-Prof. Dr. Julia Binter and 
Joanne Rodriguez
Research Teaching Project
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Julia Binter and Joanne Rodriguez, in cooperation with Dr. Cornelia Löhne, Botanic Gardens, University of Bonn
Botanic gardens shape our understanding of “nature.” Historically and today, they promote our appreciation of biodiversity. At the same time they are closely linked to European expansion and the appropriation of foreign territories. The teaching and research project Botanic Futures investigates the complex relationship between colonial legacies and biodiversity conservation. It invites students to develop curatorial strategies that reimagine how botanic gardens can generate and share knowledge about and with plants for the future.
Excursions to places like the Botanic Gardens in Bonn, along with guest lectures by national and international experts from various fields such as science, society and art, provide opportunities to explore the global and colonial-historical interdependencies of botanic gardens. These activities aim to address contemporary challenges by fostering diverse, inclusive curatorial solutions.
Botanic Futures is a collaborative initiative between the Global Heritage Lab and the University of Bonn’s Botanic Gardens. It builds on the gardens’ rich transdisciplinary dialogues, involving experts from the humanities, social and natural sciences, as well as social organizations like Bonn Postkolonial. The initiative seeks to further enhance these cross-disciplinary partnerships in both research and teaching.
Winter Semester 2024/25: Unpacking Botanic Collections
In the winter semester, Botanic Futures will focus on the logic behind plant collection from a European perspective, examining the epistemic inclusions and exclusions involved in this process. Under what political and economic conditions have plants been collected, translocated, replanted in botanic gardens, cultivated, dried, and categorized since the 16th century? Whose knowledge was documented during this process, and whose was left out, marginalised or erased? What do these collecting practices reveal about a European understanding of “nature”? What alternative human-environment relationships exist globally? And are there ways to integrate Western scientific approaches, such as those from the field of biology, with Indigenous knowledge systems? After exploring the historical contexts of scientific collection (Appadurai 1986, te Heesen/Spary 2002, Byrne et al. 2011, Förster et al. 2018) and post- and decolonial approaches (Kimmerer 2013, Haraway 2016, Lowe/Das 2018, Escobar/Frye 2020, Attala/Steel 2023), students will have the opportunity to analyze these questions using selected examples from the collection of the University of Bonn’s Botanic Gardens.
Summer Semester 2025: Curating Botanic Collections
Building on the research into the history of scientific collections, students in the summer semester are invited to develop curatorial strategies and formats for how knowledge about and with plants can be created and communicated in botanic gardens. What artistic perspectives address the colonial entanglements of botanic gardens (e.g., Zinnenburg Carroll 2017)? What new curatorial approaches are being explored by botanic gardens in places like England (Driver et al. 2021, Nielsen 2023) and Berlin? And how can curatorial formats inspire visitors to engage with biodiversity and diverse forms of knowledge?
The aim is to test decolonial curatorial methods that create new perspectives on knowledge—along with the sensory experiences and temporalities associated with it—accessible, visible, and applicable to a broader public.
The Global Heritage Lab serves as an experimental space where curatorial formats can be tested, refined, or discarded. In collaboration with the University of Bonn’s Botanic Gardens, some of these formats may be implemented for visitors.
