PhD Placement Residencies

G.A.S. Foundation hosts individuals with access to grants or external funding for PhD placement residencies of up to three months. These residencies support researchers, academics, and artists engaged in interdisciplinary research that aligns directly with the foundation’s programming strands or collaborative projects. PhD placement residents have the opportunity to engage with the local cultural environment, facilitating cross-disciplinary dialogue and creative inquiry. The programme is open to candidates whose research intersects with the foundation's areas of interest and offers a focused environment for developing their work.

The first PhD placement resident at G.A.S. Foundation was Jonn Gale, a Bulgarian-Nigerian ethnobotanist and PhD candidate at Birkbeck, University of London, who began a 12-week residency in 2025.

Jonn Gale

United Kingdom | Jan - Apr 2025

Jonn Gale is a London-based ethnobotanist working across botanical collections. Her work combines speculative analysis of historical and archival material, ethnobotanical research, and sensory-focused visual ethnography as a means of generating more multiverse, relational, process-focused, and horizontal botanical archival research practices. Her practice centers on nonlinearity, multi-species livability, and the agency, endurance, and affective temporalities of botanical objects as historical actors capable of narrating alternative histories.

She is currently undertaking a practice-led, AHRC/CHASE-funded collaborative doctorate at Birkbeck, UOL, and the Linnean Society of London, investigating the contributions of Black naturalists to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century natural knowledge. Her research involves the study of botanical specimens and manuscripts held at the Linnean Society, identifying and tracing hidden actors, mapping knowledge networks, and developing a new decolonial approach for recovering and sharing information from this archive.

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