Melanie Cournil
Mélanie Cournil is Senior Lecturer in British History at Sorbonne University, where she has been based since 2018. She received her PhD in British history in 2016 from Lyon 2 University and was the editor of the academic journal Books & Ideas from 2016-2018. During her PhD, her research focused on the involvement of Scottish people in the British Caribbean in the 18th and 19th centuries, more particularly in Jamaica and Dominica. She has published several articles related to the transatlantic slave trade, colonial medicine and anti-abolitionist campaigners in Scotland in the 19th century.
Her current research sits at the intersection of British imperial history and the history of science in the 19th century, and explores more particularly the relationship between botany and empire. For the past three years, she has been working on the history of the Glasgow Botanic Gardens, with a special focus on the first phase of their development before their relocation to the West End (1817-1841). Located in a thriving industrial city with strong commercial ties to the British Caribbean, funded by many colonial merchants and absentee planters, the Gardens stood at an important crossroads of political and economic interests, scientific discovery, cultural innovation and imperial motives. Their history has been almost entirely absent from the academic literature, and a comprehensive study will help understand how they were both anchored in a local Scottish context and shaped by more global, colonial interests.
Her research project also aims at examining the intricate and extensive scientific network of their director, Sir William Jackson Hooker. As Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Glasgow for over twenty years (1820-1841), he was the driving force behind the Gardens and became instrumental in promoting botany as a discipline in its own right at home and abroad.
I am absolutely delighted and grateful to have been awarded this Research Fellowship and to undertake research this year at the University of Glasgow Library. This fellowship will give me a valuable opportunity to delve into the Murray Collection that holds the Minute books of the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. I am also interested in furthering my understanding of the specifics of William Hooker’s academic position by consulting the University of Glasgow’s institutional archives.
I am particularly looking forward to meeting the special collections librarians and fellow academics at Glasgow University to discuss my research project and hopefully find opportunities to make the colonial legacy of the Glasgow Botanic Gardens more widely known to the general public.
