Luke Keogh is a curator and historian. He received his doctorate in environmental history from the University of Queensland, Australia. In 2012–2014, he worked in Munich as a curator of the special exhibition "Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands" created by the Deutsches Museum and the RCC. While curating this exhibition he encountered the Wardian case, which is the focus of his current research. Invented in 1829, these plant boxes are named after the surgeon and amateur naturalist Nathanial Bagshaw Ward who accidentally discovered that plants enclosed in airtight glass cases can survive for long periods without water. It revolutionised the movement of plants around the globe.
Keogh has received many awards and prizes for his work. In 2010, he was awarded the National Museum of Australia Prize for the History of Science for his essay on the pituri plant, an Australian Aboriginal resource. Recently, he won the 2015-2016 Sargent Award from the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.
Keogh’s position is generously funded by the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.
Film Interview with Luke Keogh
Select Publications:
- Keogh, Luke. “Duboisia Pituri: A Natural History.” Historical Records of Australian Science 22 (2011): 199–214.
- Keogh, Luke. “Animated Strata: Indigenous Peoples and the Reach of Resources.” In Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands, edited by Nina Möllers, Christian Schwägerl, and Helmuth Trischler, 68–73. Munich: Deutsches Museum, 2015.
- Keogh, Luke. “Setting the World in Motion.” In Welcome to the Anthropocene: The Earth in Our Hands, edited by Nina Möllers, Christian Schwägerl, and Helmuth Trischler, 146–53. Munich: Deutsches Museum, 2015.
- Keogh, Luke. “‘Masterpiece of Thought’: Stories of the Blair Athol Coal Seam and Australia Opencut.” Mining History Journal 22 (2016): 79–96.
- Keogh, Luke. “Selling Culture, Not Coal.” reCollections 11 (2016).
- Robin, Libby, Dag Avango, Luke Keogh, Nina Möllers, Bernd Scherer, and Helmuth Trischler. “Three Galleries of the Anthropocene.” The Anthropocene Review 1 no. 3 (2014): 207–24.