Sonja Walch

BIAAS awarded a grant for $10,536.37 to Sonja Walch to investigate Austrian botanist Mona Lisa Steiner’s role in the transfer of knowledge and practice in tropical botany in the Philippines from the 1930s to the 1960s. The scope of the grant included travel and living expenses to Washington D.C. for three and a half months to conduct research at the Smithsonian Institute, the National Achieves, and the National Academy of Sciences. Walch also traveled for further research to Archives of the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the Botanical Garden Archives in New York. The grant aided the ongoing research project at the University of Vienna and the research contributed to journal article in progress.

Sonja Walch received her Ph.D. from the University of Vienna and was a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellow in 2014. She has worked as a main researcher at the University of Vienna on the project “Tropical Botany in Exile.”