The Palm House and the Plantationocene: Kew's role in the emergence of the global tropical commodity system and its legacies

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I am researching Kew Garden's role in the development of coffee as a commodity crop, using Kew's extensive archive to uncover Kews' historical relationship to coffee as a commodity as well as the agricultural, political and economic cultures surrounding coffee. This research is a collaborative project with Kew Gardens and Goldsmiths University.I am particularly interested in the spaces racial hierarchies and colonial practices produces, particularly how colonialism and, later, capitalism created uneven geographies and unequal distribution of resources, labour and land, as well as cultures and modes of being. So, the framework for the research would seek to develop a spatial history - a non-linear and fragmented journey through spaces and times - of Kew Garden's influence on the development of coffee production across the colonies and the emergence of global coffee supply chains.In addition, this project coincides with the restoration of Kew Gardens' Palm House, the tropical glasshouse on site and still one of Kews' most well-known. As such, this research will contribute to new interpretation and display in Kew Gardens that provides new ways to make colonial practice and decolonial knowledge more transparent, and accessible to / representative of the wider public, in particular those with lived or ancestral experience of colonisation.