Curriculum Vitae

Place and date of birth
Holbæk, Denmark, 7 April 1961. Danish citizen.

Institutional Affiliation
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K.

Education
PhD (1993) and MSc (1990) in tropical biology, University of Aarhus, Denmark.

Research interests
Tropical forest botany: taxonomy, evolution, distribution patterns at all scales, and ecology, especially of the family Zingiberaceae (gingers) including contributions to national floras.
I am presently preparing a monograph of the Asian ginger genus Etlingera but maintain an interest in vegetation analyses with main emphasis on ground herbs in tropical rain forests.
I am collaborating on compiling an overview of natural plant resources and archeophytes of the Viking Age.

Current major project
'Etlingera of New Guinea' -- a revision of the ginger genus in New Guinea and adjacent island (Tanah Papua and Papua New Guinea), fieldwork currently mostly funded by The Material World Foundation and People's Postcode Lottery.

Experience

  • Research in tropical botany in SE Asia, Africa and S America (systematics, evolution and biogeography, ecology, vegetation analyses, ethnobotany)
  • Administration and management skills
  • Planning and conducting research projects and expeditions in tropical regions
  • Fundraising for research projects and sponsorship of new features in botanical gardens
  • Planning and teaching botanical university courses in tropical ecology, biodiversity and environmental management, biogeography, vegetation analyses, conservation, and ethnobotany in Europe and several tropical countries
  • Supervision of MSc (13 completed) and PhD students (5 completed)
  • Cultivating tropical plants collected in the wild to enable further scientific studies (including cytological and genomics) and description
  • Disseminating scientific results to the scientific community and the general public (papers and books, exhibitions, public lectures, guided tours, participatory expeditions)
  • Review of manuscripts for international journals
  • Capacity building and consultancies regarding botanical data and collections
  • Herbarium curation
  • Networking of botanical gardens of Norway and elsewhere
  • Interacting with local communities and NGOs in developing countries and Europe

Publications
 100 papers in peer reviewed journals (since 1991)
4 books on gingers (since 2006)

Employment and scholarships

2023– Current position as Zingiberales Taxonomist, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). Main tasks: taxonomic fieldwork-based research focusing on the family Zingiberaceae in SE Asia; curate and determine living and herbarium collections, teach MSc student on the RBGE/University of Edinburgh Biodiversity and Taxonomy of Plants MSc course, supervise MSc & PhD students, support the maintenance of the Zingiberaceae online resource centre (https://padme.rbge.org.uk/ZRC/), and the curation of Zingiberaceae taxonomic data in the World Flora Online (https://worldfloraonline.org/), manage operational expenditure for the delivery of the research project, and participate in other priority activities at RBGE as required, including public outreach.

2018–22 Research Fellow (to work on the ginger genus Etlingera), Conservation Officer (assessing mostly African ginger species) or Research Associate based at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, U.K.

Teaching on the MSc Course at RBGE on the module of 'Taxonomy & Collections', the field course in Colombia, as well as conducting Angiosperm Biodiversity Practicals on selected monocot families.

2015–2016

Advisor for the City of Stavanger, Norway, regarding scientific quality of botanical collections.

2011–2015

Head of Botanical Garden, Natural History Museum, University of Oslo, Norway.

2008–2011

Peter Davis Research Fellow at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh to revise the ginger genus Etlingera for Sulawesi.

2007–2008

Based at LIFE, University of Copenhagen, as substitute associate professor to teach and carry out research.

2003–2006

Three years at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh funded by the Carlsberg Foundation to conduct the project 'Phylogeny and systematics of the ginger genus Etlingera in SE Asia'.

Nov. 2003

Consultant for Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia, to evaluate the scientific quality of a botanical survey in East Kalimantan, Indonesia.

2002–2003

Study grant at the National Herbarium of The Netherlands - Leiden via "Nederlands Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek" to do research on Bornean gingers.

1997–2001

Chief Technical Advisor on a Biodiversity Capacity Building Project financed by Danced and stationed 26 months in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Borneo.

1993–2001

Employed by the universities of Aarhus and Copenhagen in different time-limited positions as, postdoc, curator or research assistant or associate professor.

Travels and fieldwork
Extensive traveling since 1985 in relation to research projects or herbarium visits to tropical countries in S America, Africa or Asia. One of the major field efforts was during the Galathea 3 circumnavigation where I was team leader of the project "Gingers on Tropical Islands" (link in Danish only) in Solomon Islands and New Guinea.

Language skills
• Danish and English: fluently spoken and excellent in writing.
• Bahasa Melayu/Indonesia, French, Spanish, and German: moderately to good.

Lectures (latest 5 years)

2024 International Botanical Congress, Madrid: symposium organizer of "Next Generation Zingiberales: from Taxonomy to Evolution", 23 July (with Vinita Gowda, India, and Jana Leong-Škorničková, Singapore as co-organizers).

Flora of Thailand Conference, presenting "What's next for Thai Zingiberaceae?", (with Sunisa Sangvirotjanapat, Thailand, and Mark F. Newman, Scotland, as co-authors/presenters), University of Aarhus, 23 July.

Seminars entitled "How many gingers are there in Borneo?" at three venues: Sarawak Forestry Cooperation (Kuching) & Forestry Research Institute (Kepong), Malaysia; Tanjungpura University (West Kalimantan), Indonesia, April.

2022 Seminar 'A recircumscription of the ginger genus Elettaria', Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, 30 Aug.

2021 Webinar entitled 'The natural distribution of green cardamom, the ginger genus Elettaria', Department of Botany, Catholic College, Pathanamthitta, Kerala, India, 7 July.

2020 Co-organiser with Craig Hilton-Taylor (Head of the Red List Unit, IUCN Cambridge) on a workshop on Red List Assessment held at the RBGE, 10–14 Feb.

2019 11th Flora Malesiana Symposium, Brunei. Awarded a fellowship to present 'How many gingers are there in New Guinea?', 4 July.

Seminar at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, presenting 'The natural distribution of green cardamom, the ginger genus Elettaria', 6 Feb.