Judith Carney, “Planting Resistance: Botanical Legacies of the African Diaspora”, British Academy/Denis Cosgrove lecture, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 28 May 2024, 6pm

free, but booking required; part of the Denis Cosgrove lecture series

Delivered by the most outstanding academics in the UK and beyond, the British Academy’s flagship Lecture programme showcases the very best scholarship in the humanities and social sciences.

In the 21st century, the expansion of large-scale industrial agriculture across tropical landscapes in the Americas is threatening an Afrodescendant food system that has long prioritized agrobiodiversity and agroecological practices. These practices emerged during the plantation era of transatlantic slavery, when the enslaved leveraged subsistence precarity for the right to food plots, independent production, and partial autonomy over their labour. Historical continuities connect this much-ignored food system to agricultural practices maintained to this day in many Afrodescendant farming communities. Places exemplified by the plants, cultural knowledge, and social memories of these communities can be considered biocultural refugia – extending a concept from European heritage landscapes to tropical environments in the Americas.