Kew’s vast collections have been the backbone of its research throughout its history. Building on the increased data availability resulting from Kew’s digitisation programme, now stored in our Integrated Collections Management System, this project will involve extracting, compiling, and cleaning a dataset of all Kew’s holdings from Taiwan (Formosa) from our Archive, Illustrations Collection and Economic Botany Collection.
As well as interrogating data from our Integrated Collections Management System, the student will also need to investigate the physical collections held at Kew. Exploring the archives, illustrations and economic botany collections and developing an understanding of the artefacts held at Kew. Developing an inventory and summaries of each item will be a large part of the project, but the student will also work with another intern, investigating Kew’s herbarium collection, to build a wider picture of the Formosan collections held at Kew. This will involve understanding the social history around these collections, the people that made them, and those that supported their work, including local and indigenous peoples. The results will go to inform further research about the Formosan collections held at Kew, including a possible exhibition in Kaohsiung in 2027.
