Nathan Bossoh completed his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science at UCL in 2022 and his main research is situated around the intersections of science, medicine and African collections.

Currently he is a History Research Fellow at Southampton University. There he is undertaking a project examining the colonial and postcolonial growth of plant medical research in West Africa with a focus on the circulation of medicinal plants in botanical museum collections between Britain, Ghana and Nigeria from the 1880s until the 1980s. Previous to this Nathan was the African Collections Research Curator at the London Science Museum between September 2022 and September 2023. In this role he conducted a major collections-based investigation into the Museum’s over 5,000 historic African material which led to his Report appraising the collection and recommending steps for its future development.

Nathan has written on various history of science, medicine and collections topics for both academic and public audiences. Nathan is also the co-curator of ‘The Kola Nut Cannot Be Contained’, an exhibition held at Wellcome Collection, London, exploring global histories, vibrant traditions, and contemporary innovations surrounding the Kola nut, a small bitter-tasting fruit found growing across Western African tropical forests.