The June talk will be given by Sally Swannell who will be talking about her work with herbaria.
Herbaria have evolved over centuries and have been described as largely unexplored biodiversity time machines. The Royal Agricultural University herbarium could be characterised as the same, containing approximately 10,000 specimen records, many dating back to the early nineteenth century. This talk will focus on the Royal Agricultural University project to digitise the collection, the wide-ranging uses of herbaria, actual and digital, and the collection’s value to research and outreach.
Sally Swannell trained as a natural history illustrator and had a career in art and design. She returned to university to study conservation, and is now a Masters student working on the herbarium digitisation project and researching the collection for her thesis.
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