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Sarah Edwards

Sarah Edwards

Associate Lecturer and Plant Records Officer, University of Oxford
Sarah Edwards is an ethnobotanist and biodiversity informaticist, currently based at the University of Oxford, where she teaches ethnobiology and biological conservation. She is also Plant Records Officer for the University of Oxford Botanic Garden and Arboretum and an Honorary Research Associate at UCL School of Pharmacy, where she was awarded her PhD in 2006. Her career has included working for Kew Gardens developing collections management, nomenclatural and medicinal plant databases. She also provided data consultancies for national and international conservation, environmental and government health agencies, regulators, and NGOs that use plant names.

As an ethnobotanist Sarah’s research interests include understanding how culture mediates people’s interactions and interrelationships with plants. Sarah has investigated medicinal plant use in northeast Brazil and worked in collaboration with First Nations communities in northern Australia, developing digital tools to facilitate intergenerational transmission of traditional plant knowledge. Other research projects have included investigating edaphic and phytochemical factors in the aetiology of equine grass sickness and the scientific evidence base of herbal medicines. Sarah has also collaborated with artists and farmers in South Wales to re-evaluate relationships with ‘weed’ species and worked with the London Borough of Richmond Arts Service as part of the Cultural Reforesting Programme.

Sarah is a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Board member of the British Herbal Medicine Association (BHMA). She is an author of several publications, including the books ‘Phytopharmacy: An Evidence-Based Guide to Herbal Medicinal Products’ (Wiley 2015) and ‘The Ethnobotanical’ (Kew Publishing/ Quercus Books 2023).

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Economy

Some experts say the US economy is on the up, but here’s why voters don’t think so

Many Americans are gloomy about the economy, despite some data saying it is improving. The Economist even took this discussion to TikTok. When its US editor John Prideaux examined inflation, wage and employment numbers,...

Electric air taxis are on the way – quiet eVTOLs may be flying passengers as early as 2025

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Electricity from farm waste: how biogas could help Malawians with no power

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High interest rates aren’t going away anytime soon – a business economist explains why

The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at its May 1, 2024, policy meeting, dashing the hopes of potential homebuyers and others who were hoping for a cut. Not only will rates remain at their current level a...

US long-term care costs are sky-high, but Washington state’s new way to help pay for them could be nixed

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Politics

Taiwan is experiencing millions of cyberattacks every day

Taiwan stands out as a beacon of democracy, innovation and resilience in an increasingly autocratic region. But this is under growing threat. In recent years, China has used a variety of grey zone tactics to pressure...

What the Supreme Court is doing right in considering Trump’s immunity case

Following the nearly three-hour oral argument about presidential immunity in the Supreme Court on April 25, 2024, many commentators were aghast. The general theme, among legal and political experts alike, was a...

US Urges China, Russia to Reject AI Control in Nuclear Arms, Align with Global Norms

Paul Dean, a senior U.S. arms control official, emphasized the critical need for China and Russia to join the U.S. in declaring that humans will always decide on the deployment of nuclear weapons, not artificial...

US election: why it’s not the protesters’ votes that the Democrats should worry about

As hundreds of New York police officers in riot gear were called in to clear away a student protest at Columbia University on Tuesday night, the university president Nemat Shafik was saying she had no choice but to take...

Science

IceCube researchers detect a rare type of energetic neutrino sent from powerful astronomical objects

About a trillion tiny particles called neutrinos pass through you every second. Created during the Big Bang, these relic neutrinos exist throughout the entire universe, but they cant harm you. In fact, only one of them is...

The Mars Sample Return mission has a shaky future, and NASA is calling on private companies for backup

A critical NASA mission in the search for life beyond Earth, Mars Sample Return, is in trouble. Its budget has ballooned from US$5 billion to over $11 billion, and the sample return date may slip from the end of this...

Dark matter: our new experiment aims to turn the ghostly substance into actual light

A ghost is haunting our universe. This has been known in astronomy and cosmology for decades. Observations suggest that about 85% of all the matter in the universe is mysterious and invisible. These two qualities are...

A Nasa rover has reached a promising place to search for fossilised life on Mars

While we go about our daily lives on Earth, a nuclear-powered robot the size of a small car is trundling around Mars looking for fossils. Unlike its predecessor Curiosity, Nasas Perseverance rover is explicitly intended to...

The rising flood of space junk is a risk to us on Earth – and governments are on the hook

A piece of space junk recently crashed through the roof and floor of a mans home in Florida. Nasa later confirmed that the object had come from unwanted hardware released from the international space station. The 700g,...

Technology

Harvest CEO Eyes Bitcoin ETF Entry into Mainland China via Hong Kong's ETF Connect

Harvests CEO feels that the Hong Kong-mainland China ETF bridge initiative can potentially expand crypto ETF access in mainland China. Harvest Explores Offering Bitcoin and Ether ETFs to Mainland Chinese Investors via...

Samsung Follows Apple, Abandons Autonomous Driving and EV Research Initiatives

Samsung has reportedly halted its autonomous EV driving research project. The companys Advanced Institute of Technology branch has dropped autonomous driving from its research initiatives. This move comes after allegations...

SHIB Burns Skyrocket 5,803%: 26.4 Million Shiba Inu Sent Ablaze in Meme Coin Surge

Shibburn, a popular meme coin explorer, has reported a significant spike in the burn rate of Shiba Inu, the second-largest meme cryptocurrency in market capitalization value. In the meantime, the SHIB price has risen...

Apple Reportedly Inks Deal with Samsung for Foldable Displays, Hints at Future Products

Speculations that Samsung Display was trying to sign Apple as its next big foldable display client surfaced online, but nothing was set in stone because Apple was unsure about building foldable products. However, Apples...
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