Ashley Buchanan

is the Associate Director of Fellowships for the Folger Institute and a historian of the early modern world, with a particular interest in plants, recipes, and medicinal cultures in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. Her research spans many topics which includes the history of science and medicine, women, and politics as well as the dynamics of gender and authority. Her current book project investigates the social, cultural, and political significance of pharmaceutical experimentation as well as the medicinal and botanical patronage at the court of the last Medici Princess, Anna Maria Luisa de Medici (1667 – 1743).