Rethinking the relationship between the UK and the Overseas Territories: Kew, science diplomacy and soft power.
Kew is virtually unique within the community of UK scientific and heritage in having a longstanding and clearly defined commitment to working in and in partnership with the UK’s Overseas Territories (UKOTs). At a time when the UKOTs are going through a period of change and challenge (as a consequence of Brexit, funding cuts, the cost of living crisis, climate change, and against the backdrop of growing anti-colonial sentiment within the UK and the OTs themselves), Kew occupies a particularly important position in materialising, maintaining and manifesting cultural and scientific (and even para-diplomatic) relations
between the Overseas Territories and the UK.
Drawing upon archives, datasets, collections, and interviews with current and former Kew colleagues (and partners within the OTs), this PhD project will examine Kew’s role in fostering scientific, heritage-related, diplomatic and policy connections between the UK and the Overseas Territories up to the present day, and explore how these relationships have expressed themselves through Kew’s organisational structures, collections, curatorial practices and specialist knowledges, and within the OTs themselves.
This PhD is also an opportunity to explore and develop new sets of relationships between Kew and the UK Overseas Territories in ways that are relevant to the present and future needs and generations of the OTs, and in ways that will advance Kew’s own scientific strategies.
This PhD project has the potential to contribute new thinking to debates around science/heritage as “soft power” and science diplomacy/para-diplomacy within and beyond the specific context of the UK Overseas Territories.