SDG Detail

F&ES 681 Ethnobotany

Postgraduate course

Project description

Ethnobotany is the scientific study of mutual relationships among peoples, plants, and the environment. This course presents ethnobotany as a broad interdisciplinary field at the interface of anthropology and botany and discusses its methodology, ranging from plant inventories to multivariate analysis of plant knowledge. The course focuses on classic themes of interest to ethnobotany, such as the importance of plants for local livelihoods (including nutrition and medicine) and the ethnobotanical importance of selected plant families, but it also explores topics of current ethnobotanical investigation, such as urban ethnobotany, intellectual property rights, development cooperation, biocultural diversity, and conservation. The course topics have been selected to provide an all-round overview of how ethnobotany research has evolved over the past decades and to represent a well-rounded mix of theory and practice, with the aim to prepare an aspiring junior ethnobotanist for field research.