Research Assistant (Mobile Museum Project) 0.8 FTE This 22 month post focusses on the educational uses of economic botany artefacts and specimens dispersed by Kew to schools across the UK in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This will involve analysis of collection archives at Kew; investigation of the role of school museums in contemporary educational policy and pedagogic practice at both the national and local levels; and historical research on science education and the broader contexts of nature study in the period. The work undertaken will require co-authorship of a working paper and one or more publications in scholarly journals. The research will also feed into a schools-based outreach project managed by the Learning & Participation Department at Kew, involving the creation of new museums in two London primary schools.
Closing date 9 August, details at:
PhD on papermaking & materials
Fully-funded PhD scholarship to work on 19th century papermaking and raw materials, jointly supervised by Prof. Felix Driver and Dr Mark Nesbitt. Focussing on the unrivalled collection of plant materials and manufactured papers from many parts of the world held in the Economic Botany Collection at Kew, the studentship provides an opportunity to explore the economic, cultural and technical significance of the search for alternative sources of material for paper making during the Victorian era. The PhD thesis is likely to take the form of a series of well-chosen case studies, raising wider questions concerning the formation of knowledge about raw materials, technologies and commodities.
We are open to applications from a wide range of disciplines. Closing date is 4 August and details are at:
