Panizzi Lectures 2025 Focus on Print Culture in the Age of Climate Change
H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, a few months after being ‘planted’ in a Johannesburg garden.
This year's Panizzi Lectures will be given by Professor Emeritus at the University of the Witwatersrand Isabel Hofmeyr on the subject of 'Books in Their Elements: Print Culture in the Age of Climate Change'.
The annual series of lectures held in person at the British Library and online is given by eminent scholars of the book based on original research and are named after former Principal Librarian of the British Museum Anthony Panizzi and were established in 1985.
Isabel Hofmeyr, who was also Global Distinguished Professor at New York University from 2013 to 2022, has worked extensively on book history and in terms of environmental and oceanic themes. Her first lecture on October 27 at 6.30pm will be Plants, politics and print in South Africa: Botany and buried books – Smuts, Gandhi and Mandela and concentrate on a plant and associated book linked to each person.
The second lecture on October 30 will be Insects, colonial archives and postcolonial book history focuses on the intersection of insect, paper and chemicals, and looks at how colonial states undertook fumigation in archives. The third lecture on November 3, Dried plants and print: Herbaria and African herbalists, asks how plants could feature as players and protagonists in stories of print and concentrates on the perennial spreading herb Commelina africana which is indigenous to southern Africa and recognized for its medicinal properties. The lecture will examine the textual and archival lives of this species by focusing on a popular medicinal pamphlet and a set of herbarium sheets.
This talks will be held in the British Library Knowledge Centre and are also available to watch online. They are free but booking is required.
