Panamensis
Science, nature and knowledge in Panama
An independent research programme exploring the histories of science and nature in Panama through archives, collections, landscapes and people.
What is Panamensis?
Why it existsFor more than a century, Panama has been a meeting place for tropical research, international expeditions, biological collecting, conservation and the study of the natural world. The records of that history are now dispersed across institutions, countries and collections.
What it doesPanamensis finds those records, connects them and uses them to tell stories about the people, places, organisms and institutions through which knowledge about Panama was created.
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Begin anywhere
Enter through a story, a person, a place or a document. Each route opens a different part of the same historical world.
Browse the record
Featured story
How did Panama’s forests, islands, rivers and coasts become places of international scientific attention?
A story can begin with a field station, a specimen label or a photograph—and lead outward to the people who worked there, the institutions that employed them and the landscapes transformed by research.
Read the research behind the story
From the archive
A field notebook is never only a notebook.
The record currently highlighted in the public corpus is RU 134 finding aid. Like a notebook, photograph or specimen label, it can connect people, places, institutions, fieldwork, collections and later publications without losing the context of the original source.
Research agenda
Research does not arrive fully finished. Panamensis shows work already underway, questions waiting to be opened and longer histories that will require time, access and collaboration.
Current documentary investigations producing sources, stories, identifications and new connections.
Research that can advance as archival access, time, partnerships and resources allow.
Large historical territories and dispersed collections identified for future investigation.
Current research · Dossier
Can the production model represent the institutional, documentary, specimen and role history of Barro Colorado without flattening contested metadata?
Explore the dossierRecently in Panamensis
The comparison of catalogue and finding-aid records identified competing 1939 and 1940 transition dates and differences in role chronology. Primary legislation remains unexamined.
Read the updateCollaborate
Panamensis welcomes documentary leads, corrections, identifications, oral testimony, information about collections and research partnerships.
Ways to contributeAbout Panamensis
Panamensis studies the histories of science, nature, environment and knowledge in Panama. It brings together evidence dispersed across archives, libraries, museums, biological collections, publications, private papers, landscapes and personal memory.
The programme is developed by librarian, archivist and researcher Edgardo Civallero. Its public work includes stories, research dossiers, documentary sources, data, publications and opportunities for collaboration.