Our laboratory, first established in 1995, serves as a focus of research and teaching in ethnobotany, ethnozoology, indigenous environmental knowledge systems and cognate areas. In the 2001 UK Research Assessment Exercise, the department received a 5 rating, and, in addition, Environmental Anthropology (including Ethnobiology) was also flagged for its excellence in 1996. The Department was also rated excellent in the most recent Teaching Quality Assessment.
The work of the Lab is relevant to two main taught postgraduate programmes: the MSc in Environmental Anthropology (from 1993) and the MSc in Ethnobotany (from 1998), which is run jointly with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Modules in these programmes are also available to students on taught postgraduate programmes in Conservation Biology, Tourism and Conservation, Social Anthropology and Environmental Social Science.
There are currently about 15 students registered for research degrees who are part of the Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology research group and linked to the work of the lab.
The Ethnobiology Lab currently provides equipment and specimens for teaching ethnobiological research skills, and serves as a transit station for receiving, examining and redirecting field material. It houses the Powell-Cotton Collection of plant-based material culture from Southeast Asia, and small reference and teaching collections of herbarium and spirit specimens (some 1000 items) arising from recent research projects.
We are linked to the Eden Project as ethnobotanical consultants.
Some views of the Ethnobiology Lab (Click on a picture for a larger image)
Current Research
We presently undertake research in the following areas:
Intellectual property rights in relation to ethnobotanical knowledge; cultural and natural rights; the legal framework of conservation; ethnobiological classification systems; cultural and genetic diversity, germplasm exchange; indigenous knowledge as used in environmental arguments; applied aspects of ethnobotany; plant knowledge and social change; deforestation and forest knowledge, non-timber forest products, non-cultivated foods; farmer perception of environmental problems; sustainable use and management of biological resources, community-level approaches to conservation; medical anthropology; historical ecology
The main country focus of our work has so far been Bhutan, Brunei, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, China, Ethiopia, Nepal, Pakistan, Mexico, Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, Guyana and Vietnam.
Roy Ellen, Axel Klein, Gary Martin, Dario Novellino, Simon Platten, Raj Puri, Sonia Vougioukalou, Anna Waldstein
Honorary positions: Miguel Alexiades, Michael Heinrich, Tom Henfrey, Patricia Howard, Stefanie Klappa, Christin Kocher Schmid, Mark Nesbitt, Diana Pritchard, John Kesby
