Kew Royal Botanic Gardens, Looking for a PhD that sits at the intersection of law, history and botanic collections !
The ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW (RBG KEW) and ROYAL HOLLOWAY, UNIVERSITY OF
LONDON (RHUL) are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative
doctoral studentship from October 2026 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships
(CDP) scheme.
This project, undertaken in RHUL’s Department of Law and Kew Gardens, explores the history
and trajectory of Kew’s plant collecting and plant export activities since Kew’s colonial
beginnings, including contemporaneous developments in international environmental law,
through to global justice and human rights issues.
This project will be jointly supervised by CHINA WILLIAMS, Kew’s Legal Agreements Advisor
and PROFESSOR MARK NESBITT, Plant Humanities Research Leader at RBG KEW; and
PROFESSOR JILL MARSHALL, Professor of Law at RHUL, and the student will be expected to
spend time at both RHUL and RBG KEW, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP
funded students across the UK.
Application Deadline: 8 May 2026