Botanical Seminar (Summer Semester: English, Winter Semester: German)

WHEN? Thu 8:15-9:45 (variable schedule). WHERE? Seminar Room 506-507, Biotower 5. floor. WHP? Prof. Dr. Peter Nick. FOR WHOM? Bachelor Biology 5. semester, Master Biology, Teachers Biology

 

Scope

Each semester a topic is illuminated from different angles to generate a thorough image.

  • Exercise information searching and filtering skills
  • Exercise presentation skills
  • Minisymposium

The seminar is targeted to students Bachelor Biology (General and Applied Biology), Biology Master, Biology for Teachers, Geoecology, but is also open to students from other curricula. Just contact me. For Bachelor, Teachers and Geoecology there is more support for the bibliography, for Master a higher degree of independence is expected.

 

Topic 2025: PLANTS, CULTURE, GLOBALISATION

Plants accompanied human civilisation and were behind the Neolithic Revolution that gave rise to our civilisations. Plants have enabled and enriched the exchange of human culture. But they were also hard-core tools of colonisation. For the challenges of the future, plant diversity is a key factor. Access to this factor is a determinant of political power, after all. Botany is, thus, by its very essence, linked to culture and globalisation, with all light and dark sides. It is a very political science, therefore. The seminar addresses from different angles and with a holistic approach the way, how humans domesticated plants, how this domestication changed plants, but on the other hand, also, how plants shaped human biology and culture. Plants have written history - how every considered that the rebirth of slavery in a country that was progressive at that time, the US, would come from the domestication of Sugarcane, or that Cotton, even before the advent of humans, was a very global plant? Who knows about the shocking case of biopiracy, when Great Britain drove people in China into opium addiction, just to get control over the Tea Plant and even to have it stolen from China? How do we deal with the fact that still private companies try to secure private property on plants using legal tricks? These are the kind of questions that will be discussed in this semester.

Impulse Slides and other materials are found on Ilias (Fakultät Chemie und Biowissenschaften - laufendes Semester - BIO_MA_Seminar_Botanik

Structure

Information searching and skills: Students will develop their question and then a strategy to find and filter relevant information.

Presentation skills: We develop criteria for a good seminar that will be the base for fair and constructive feedback by the students. All get two chances - the first time, they get feedback on their talk. The second time, in frame of the minisymposium gives then the chance to come up with a really polished talk.

Minisymposium: For the second round we will find a date for a minisymposium, where all the facets will come together and a comprehensive image of the topic will emerge from the combination of the individual seminars. This will be open to the public.