Formally established in 2007,
the Centre's overall mission is to undertake research, education and
community outreach on the links between cultural and biological
diversity.
The Centre’s staff conduct international research,
coordinate postgraduate degrees, provide international training for
capacity building, engage in community outreach, offer consultation
services and edit a publication series.
Latest News
Kent at the International Congress of Ethnobiology: The Centre for Biocultural Diversity and Kent's School of Anthropology and Conservation were well-represented at the recent ICE held on the west coast of Vancouver Island in Canada between 9 and 14 May. Miguel Alexiades and Dario Novellino presented films at the 'Tofino Indigenous Film Festival': 'Headwaters of the past' and 'Palawan - voices from the lost frontier' respectively. More…
Alexiades also convened a panel on 'Participatory video and traditional resource rights' and contributed to 'Innovating practices in communicating research'. Gary Martin contributed to a panel on the future of the concept of Biocultural Diversity, and with Heather Leach and Erin Smith organized a panel on the 'The vital pursuit of policy matters'. Roy Ellen contributed to a panel on 'Traditional foods adaptive capacity and threats to food security', Lisa Fenton and Ivan Casselman to the panel on 'Cultural transmission of knowledge', Rory McBurney to 'Merging nutrition and ethnobotanical approaches', Simon Platten and Gary Martin to 'The global strategy for plant conservation', and Christina Turi to the panel on Ethnomedicine.
Posters were presented by Emily Caruso, Jesse Engbretson, Reka Komaromi, Heather Leach, Armando Medinaceli, Simon Platten, Rachel Kaleta, and Ntumngia Nchang. Former Kent students participating included Simone de Athayde (now Florida), Bronwen Powell (now McGill), Jessica Dolan (Harvard, McGill), Kieren MacKenzie and Jennifer Heckert.
Biocultural Diversity Methods Course: Despite the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud shutting down the airspace over the UK and much of northern Europe, 55 students and 14 lecturers from 28 countries attended the ERASMUS Intensive Programme on Biocultural Diversity, Concepts and Methods, held at the CBCD in Canterbury between April 18th and May 1st. More…
Video taped sessions allowed those that were late or unable to attend to view proceedings from afar and several lecturers made their presentations via Skype. Participants will now be communicating via the Virtual Classroom, a forum set up to facilitate discussion and feedback on experiences using the methods taught during the course. Next year's course is to be held in Barcelona, tentatively scheduled for the first two weeks of March 2011.
The final programme and information about this year's course can be found on the website www.bioculturaldiversity.eu
Oliver Rackham, Honorary Professor of Historical Ecology in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge will speak on The Conservation and Recovery of Natural Woodland at 5.30 on Friday 19 March in the DICE Room.
This meeting is sponsored by the CBCD and the Canterbury Woods Research Group.
Dario Novellino’s research project among
Aurunci shepherds in Italy, sponsored by a TCF grant, is supporting the
completion of an important volume written by Luca Ricciardi, a local
historian from Maranola, Lazio Region (Central Italy) who is presently
working for the “De Santis Center” for Research and Documentation on
Aurunci Culture. The volume is a transcription of a nearly 500 year old
land-register (‘Catasto Onciario’) of Maranola and neighboring Castel
Onorato village, compiled during the Spanish domination of Carlo I
(1500-1558). The volume provides useful insights on the life, economy
and land management practices of local shepherds and rural population
of Maranola and Castel Onorato around the middle of the
sixteen-century. More…
The volume is valuable also because it provides
contemporary Aurunci shepherds and farmers with an historical spectrum
within which their present practices can be contextualized and
reassessed. More importantly, the volume encourages important
reflections on the profound linkages between biological and cultural
diversity. In fact the progressive abandonment of some traditional land
management practices mentioned in the ‘Catasto’ (which, nevertheless,
have persisted until the sixties) have led, over the past four decades,
to the disappearance of several varieties of domestic animals and
plants. Interestingly enough, the names of important landmarks and
places within the cultural landscape of local farmers and shepherds
have remained unchanged since the sixteen-century to present times.
This applies, as well, to the surnames of those families who are still
living in the villages of Maranola and Castel Onorato and who have
inherited the centuries old stone terraces.
On December 8,
2009 at the Polo Didattico of Rome (Italy). The Overseas Filipinos
Society for the Promotion of Economic Security (OFSPES) sponsored a
talk and film showing by Dario Novellino (CBCD Research Fellow) on the
socio-economic implications of mining on the future of Palawan Island,
be entitled, “PALAWAN: VOICES FROM THE LOST FRONTIER” - BUILDING
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ SOLIDARITY ON TRADITIONAL RIGHTS AND BIO-CULTURAL
DIVERSITY. The event was co-organized by the Centre for Biocultural
Diversity and the Palawan-based ALDAW NETWORK (Ancestral Land/Domain
Watch); members of the Filipino expatriate community in Rome and of the
local Catholic Church mainly attended it. The Filipino press in Italy
and the ABS/CBN Global television (Balitang Europe) covered the event,
which is now featured
on their website.
New
publications in the Berghahn
Books Series Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology
include: Landscape ethnoecology, edited by Leslie Main Johnson and
Eugene S. Hunn; Landscape, Process and Power, edited by Serena Heckler;
Mobility and migration in Indigenous Amazonia, edited by Miguel N.
Alexiades; Unveiling the Whale, by Arne Kalland; and Virtualism,
Governance and Practice, edited by James G. Carrier and Paige West.
CBCD Managing
Director, Rajindra Puri, DICE researcher Dr Ian Bride and several Kent
graduates teamed up with the RITE Institute to develop and run an
innovative summer programme at Kent in 2009. Funded by the EU Social
Fund, English Language Education through the Environment creatively
combined English language learning, drama, environmental education and
field trips around Kent for school children from Calabria, Italy.
CBCD Managing Director, Rajindra Puri and
medical anthropologist Hattie Wells produced a report for the Joint
Nature Conservation Committee, UK, on Substantiating the economic value
of Plant biodiversity to the Pharmaceutical Industry in April 2009.
CBCD Research
fellow, Dr.
Dario Novellino is working on the project Linking networks on
pastoralism and mobile production systems with a grant from The
Christensen Fund. He has also recently produced a short film, Palawan:
Voices from the Lost Frontier, a documentary on the impact of mining on
indigenous peoples and farmers in Palawan, Philippines, and has teamed
up with Survival
International to campaign for the rights of the
indigenous people of Palawan. His latest publication, From
‘impregnation’ to ‘attunment’: a sensory view of how magic works, has
been published in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
(December 2009).
New Honorary
Research Associates at the CBCD: From the Eden Project, economic
botanist Dr. Andrew Ormerod and Ian Martin, curator of the Dry Tropics
Biome; Dr. Nigel Crawhall, linguist and Secretariat director of the
Indigenous People of Africa Coordinating Committee (IPACC) and Dr.
Cagan Sekercioglu, ornithologist and Senior Research Scientist, Center
for Conservation Biology, Stanford University.
The Centre will
host an ERASMUS Intensive Programme in Biocultural Diversity:
Concepts and Interdisciplinary Methods between April 18 and
May 1st 2010. The course, supported by a grant from the EU Erasmus
Lifelong Learning Programme, is free and open to postgraduate students
interested in developing research in human-environment relationships in
Europe and elsewhere, and features an innovative syllabus taught by
Europe's leading professionals in research and training in Biocultural
Diversity. More
Johan Iskandar will be attached to the Centre
for Biocultural Diversity as Visiting Professor between October and
December 2009. Johan is Professor of Human Ecology at the Institute of
Ecology, Padjadjaran University, Bandung, Indonesia. A former Kent PhD
student, he has researched and written extensively on the ecology of
human subsistence and ethnobiology in Indonesia, particularly
relating to the Baduy people of upland West Java. More
The Annual
Kent-GDF-Kew Distinguished Lecture
in Ethnobotany for 2009 was given by Prof Nancy Turner (U
Brit
Columbia) at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew on Oct 22nd. Nancy Turner is one
of the most influential (and charismatic) ethnobotanists working today.
She is best known for her collaborations with First Nations peoples of
western Canada, and has published extensively on wild foods and
nutrition, materials, and many other topics. This was a rare
opportunity to hear her speak at a European venue.
Nancy spoke on Bringing the food back
home indigenous foodways, nutrition and biodiversity indigenous
foodways, nutrition and biodiversity in western Canada.
Nancy spent a week at Kent, teaching new students on our unique MSc in
Ethnobotany taught jointly with RBG Kew.
