Kasia Boddy and Bonnie Lander Johnson have received a grant from the University’s Research & Collections Programme for funding within the Materiality Research Growth Network to explore ‘Cambridge Saffron’. The project is to examine the history of Cambridge’s involvement in saffron production and consumption, both locally and globally. Working with colleagues in the UL, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Botanic Garden herbarium, and a range of college libraries and archives, Kasia and Bonnie will look for evidence of saffron as a crop, a culinary or medicinal ingredient and a dye in the Cambridge collections. They will begin by considering saffron as it was once grown and consumed in Cambridge and its immediately surrounding areas, then expand out to consider the place of saffron in the global economy and in aesthetic, religious and political representation.