PhD Oral Exam - Shi Tracy Qiu, Individualized Programs

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Botanical gardens are inherently linked to Western colonization and neocolonialism, despite contemporary gardens establishing identities on the frontline of biodiversity conservation and governance (Neves, 2019a). Coloniality—hidden ideologies and values of Western colonialism following post-colonial independence (Mignolo and Walsh, 2018; Quijano, 2000)—reproduces itself in botanical gardens through curatorial practices, exhibitions and interpretation, and narratives around plant collection and natural science history that center European constructs of “nature”, landscape, and plant-people relations.

My research-creation dissertation explores what decolonization and decoloniality can mean in relation to botanical gardens, both as agents of European colonial expansion and spaces of botanical knowledge production. Research-creation combines reflective research actively within the creation process (Government of Canada, 2012) and is often described as an intervention in traditional Western research methods (Loveless, 2019). In addition to a critical examination of literature on the coloniality of botanical gardens past and present, my thesis explores options outside of the dominant modes of traditional academic knowledge production through the narrative of my theoretical and methodological journey.

Research results are informed through collected materials and my recorded interactions with primary historical sources at the Royal Botanic Gardens of Kew (England) and Edinburgh (Scotland), as well as a 150km hike through the Scottish Highlands. These materials and observations grow into a set of autoethnographic works that challenge Eurocentric narratives of travel, while also interrupting colonial modes of botanical knowledge production through archival interventions. The resulting research-creation products include a parody of a historical travel journal that reflects the European gaze back on itself, and a portfolio of photographs and illustrations of Peanut Tracy—a small suede doll that accompanies me in the archives. Both works challenge dominant narratives around European constructions of non-European landscapes, while reflecting and interrogating my own subjectivity and biases as a researcher, gardener, and artist of Chinese descent and settler-Canadian acculturation.

By visibilizing my own background and examining how this informs my research decisions and perspectives on coloniality and decoloniality in botanical gardens, my thesis asks what the decolonization of botanical garden knowledges could look like when approached through a grounded, localized, and embodied perspective.