Byre World - The Holobiont Herbarium, 29 January 2025

Byre World - The Holobiont Herbarium
Wednesday 29 January 2025, 6.30pm

Open to all, free entry - but places must be reserved in advance

Join the School of Modern Languages for the first Byre World event of the Candlemas semester.

Herbaria are collections of preserved biological specimens documenting the plants, algae, and fungi of the world. Even though their scientific role has declined since the 1980s, they have been foundational in the development of modern science and its processes of classification.

In this event, Dr Damiano Benvegnù and Dr Harry Watkins discuss their Holobiont Herbarium project, which revises the role of herbaria in the late Anthropocene. This project aims to deconstruct the St Andrews Botanic Garden herbarium as a mere archive of scientific objects and reconstruct it as a new system of knowledge production capable of acknowledging plants, algae, and fungi as cognitive and historical agents embedded in multispecies narratives and ecosemiotic systems.

All Byre World events are free to attend and are open to all members of the University and the general public - but places must be reserved in advance.

See the Byre Theatre website for full details and to reserve your place.