Richard has worked at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew for seven years. Prior to this Richard has worked in applied plant sciences, in agriculture, consultancy and publishing. At Kew, Richard leads the Science Education and training team, and is also the link between our science directorate (of around 450 people) and the delivery of our organizational outreach strategy. The outreach strategy aims to encourage greater understanding and participation in Kew’s work by the general public.
The department oversees all Science Education (MSc, PhD, interns etc.). It is also responsible to support the science department deliverables in the Kew Outreach Strategy.
This internship will have two aspects. The first is to develop a database that captures and tracks all of Kew’s outreach activities that take place through the 200+ scientific projects taking place at Kew. This work will include speaking to scientists at Kew and developing a database to hold relevant information including details of the outreach activities. The second aspect will be to support the development of a major outreach activity as part of Kew Science. This will be in the theme of a large citizen science project that aims to encourage the public to take part in a citizen science project. This opportunity will support the development of the citizen science project by conducting research into other similar citizen science projects, considering how Kew can approach a large citizen science project and working with the team to develop appropriate methodologies and approaches. The project is likely to use the application iNaturalist. iNatluralist allows citizens to make observations of plants, animals and fungi across the world.
From June 10 to September 1, 2024 (adjustable at the discretion of the organisation)