Gardens, Green Spaces, The Plants in Them, and Women

My thesis, provisionally titled ‘Gardens, Green Spaces, The Plants in Them, and Women’, seeks to examine women’s engagement with the natural world, in the long-nineteenth century*, exploring the diverse ways they connected with plants, gardens, and green spaces, and how, through these engagements, they were able to negotiate and drive broader social, cultural, scientific, and public health transformations.

*I’m choosing to reinterpret the definition of the long-nineteenth century which is typically defined as the period from 1789 to 1914. I’m pushing that final endpoint up to 1930, so wrapping in the first world war, and a large part of the interwar period.

Key Areas of Focus

I am planning to cover a variety of topics areas in my PhD. The current projected chapters are:

Chapter One: Introduction/General Literature Review

Chapter Two: Methodology and Theoretical Framework

Chapter Three: Education

Chapter Four: Gardens

Chapter Five: Science & Art

Chapter Six: Public Health

Chapter Seven: Ethics

Chapter Eight: Adventurers

Chapter Nine: General Discussions / Conclusions