Melanie Boehi is a historian based at the Basel Graduate School of History and Centre for African Studies Basel. She is currently finishing up her PhD dissertation on “A South African social garden: People, plants and multispecies histories in the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden”. Her main research interests are human–plant relationships, museological naturecultures, archive theories and methods, and histories of (post)colonial presents in South Africa and around the globe. Among her latest publications is the article “‘Flowers are South Africa’s silent ambassadors’: Flower shows and botanical diplomacy in South Africa”, which appeared in the book The Politics of Nature and Science in Southern Africa (ed. by Ramutsindela, Miescher and Boehi, 2016). She is also the founder of Nowseum, a speculative museum of now. With Nowseum, she recently produced “Cape Town Floriography”, a public history and art intervention addressing connections of flower markets, archives and urban life in Cape Town through space and time.

http://www.nowseum.com