Ashley Buchanan
Ashley Buchanan is the Postdoctoral Fellow in Plant Humanities at Dumbarton Oaks. She is a historian of the early modern world, with a particular interest in plants, recipes, and medicinal cultures in 17th- and 18th-century Europe. She received her PhD in early modern history from the University of South Florida in 2018. Her research spans many topics which includes the history of science and medicine, women, and politics as well as the dynamics of gender and authority. Her current book project, coming out of her dissertation, investigates the social, cultural, and political significance of pharmaceutical experimentation as well as the medicinal and botanical patronage at the court of the last Medici Princess, Anna Maria Luisa de Medici (1667–1743). Her goal is to broaden the global dimension of recipes by studying the numerous exotic plants imported into Tuscany from the New World, East Africa, and Southeast Asia in the late 18th century. In addition to almost a decade of teaching and working with undergraduates both in the United States and in Italy, Ashley has been a junior fellow in residence with the Medici Archive Project at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze and an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow at The Huntington.
