Uppsala University is a research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded as early as 1477, it is the oldest university in Scandinavia, and for centuries has been one of Europe's most renowned seats of learning.

Carolus Linnaeus, who is well-known as the father of modern plant systematics, was professor at Uppsala University, and made many journeys throughout Scandinavia documenting traditional use of plants. His studies of the Sami in northern Sweden and their plant use are still well known today. In this sense he played not only an important role for botany but also for ethnobotany, the study of the interaction of people with plants.

Ethnobotany has more recently been furthered by the work of Inga Hedberg and her nearly 50 years of botanical research in Africa. She is a strong proponent of local participation in biodiversity conservation. In the 1990s, she introduced ethnobotany as a subject at Uppsala, which lead to a steady development of the subject in teaching and research. Starting in 2005, the Department of Systematic Botany is teaching a graduate level course in Ethnobotany open to senior undergraduate students and students in the graduate programme in Biology, and offers supervision to MSc students to undertake Thesis projects or Minor Field Studies.

Currently, Uppsala University is one of the leading institutions in ethnobotanical research, led by Lars Björk, Hugo de Boer and Anneleen Kool. Research focuses on traditional use of plants for women’s healthcare, transmission of knowledge, parasite repellents and market ethnobotany; and on molecular bar-coding to identify traded medicinal plants. Research is currently conducted in Morocco, the Kurdish Autonomous Region, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

For more information on Ethnobotany and Biocultural Diversity courses and projects at Uppsala please contact Hugo de Boer: hugo.deboer@ebc.uu.se