Dr Prudence Ann Gibson | UNSW Research

My Expertise

My expertise sits within the disciplines of Critical Plant Studies, Environmental Aesthetics and Sustainable Design, specifically in the areas of art/design and narrative.

Keywords

environmental humanities

plant sciences

herbarium

speculative aesthetics

cultural narratives

posthumanism

feminism

Fields of Research (FoR)

Sustainable design, Interactive narrative, Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting), Visual cultures, Creative and professional writing

SEO tags

Expanding Knowledge in the Biological Sciences

Expanding Knowledge through Studies of the Creative Arts and Writing

The Creative Arts (incl. Graphics and Craft)

Biography

Dr Prudence Gibson is sole author of The Plant Contract (Brill 2028) and The Pharmacy of Plants: Janet Laurence (NewSouth Publishing 2015) in addition to trade books, essays and peer-review papers. All her work is informed by theoretical concepts of plant studies, eco-feminism, sustainable art+design and post-human theory. Her work extends to scripting and producing video art, narrative projects and curatorial approaches to plants inspired by new aesthetics and new plant science. She is Lead CI on the 2020-23 ARC Linkage grant Exploring the cultural value of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens Herbarium collection using an environmental aesthetic. In this role she has commissioned artists, poets, sound designers and micro-fiction writers to collaborate with her and with expert scientists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, in order to revalue their collections.

Gibson's own practice weaves fictional elements and narrative threads into her scholarly publications. She is also a producer of NTROs and is part of a team commissioned by City of Sydney to create a Barlow Street Banksia Forest in Haymarket. Her next sole authored book, The Plant Thieves (NewSouth Publishing 2023) reveals the stories of the plants and people connected to the Herbarium, Mt Annan, Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens. It will be a selection of essays on the herbarium's specimens and botanists. She has been invited as a keynote speaker to a number of events and symposia most recently the Potsdam Film University 2021 Fabulation symposium, the Mind of Plants Symposium 2021 and the Being with Plants 2021 conference. She has been invited to present as part of The Conversation's partnership with the State Library of Queensland Live panel discussion "Once Upon a Plant." She collaborates with scholars at York University (Canada) and Kew Gardens (London).

Recent talks:

Mind of Plants book and conference video (front page) June 2021: https://www.themindofplants.com/
Being with Plants conference July 2021 https://youtu.be/k_sHKZbS4jU
Queensland Library (with The Conversation) panel - Plants and People July 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwveW0IjCB0

My Grants

2020-3 Lead Chief Investigator ARC Linkage LP190100069 $296, 000

2019 UNSW Art and Design Dean’s Award for best scholarly single author book – The Plant Contract, Brill.

2019 UNSW Art and Design Faculty Research Grant $9, 465

2018 UNSW Art and Design Faculty Research Grant $10,500

2017 UNSW Art and Design Faculty Research Grant $1,800

2015 UNSW School of Arts and Media School Research Grant $5000 for Janet Laurence monograph New South Publishing.

2014 Australia Council New Work grant (Visual Arts Board) $20 000 to write a book on ‘Plant sentience, bio-art and aesthetics of cure.’

2014 Dean’s Student Leadership Award – Research, FASS, UNSW

2013 Dean’s Student Leadership Award – Creative and Performing Arts, FASS, UNSW.

2011 Full-time post-graduate scholarship APA UNSW for PhD in writing, $24 000 per annum for three years.

2011 International Independent Publishers (silver) Award for category of essay/creative non fiction for the book The Rapture of Death.

2009 Australia Council New Work grant (Visual Arts Board) $10 000 to write a book, The Rapture of Death.

My Research Activities

Gibson is Lead Chief Investigator on the ARC Linkage project 2020-23, entitled Exploring the cultural value of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens Herbarium collection using an environmental aesthetic $296 000.Her research team includes Brett Summerell, chief botanist Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, and Sophie O'Brien CEO of Bundanon Trust, UNSW's Sigi Jottkandt and Melbourne University's Professor Marie Sierra.
She is also a key member of the Dirt Witches eco-activist group that creates artworks and urban greening projects to raise awareness for changes to biodiversity and plant extinctions.
She collaborates with botanists, horticulturists, community greening staff and herbarium managers, and works to deepen connections (and outputs) with her network of poets, artists, writers and film-makers.

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