Kat Harrison

Kathleen Harrison is an ethnobotanist, studying the relationship between plants and people, folk uses of plants and mushrooms in ritual, art, medicine, materials and food.  Kathleen works with an emphasis on the beliefs and practices that illustrate indigenous peoples’ appreciation of nature.  Her fieldwork has focused on the cultures of Mexico, Amazonian Peru, Ecuador, and the contemporary psychedelic and shamanic sub-cultures of the western United States.

Kat leads ethnobotany field-courses in Hawaii and Peru. She also works as a photographer, an illustrator, and consults in the field of ecological restoration.   She teaches at the California School of Herbal Studies and Sonoma State University.  Kat is co-founder and project director of Botanical Dimensions, a non-profit that supports ethnobotanical fieldwork. BD has fostered living plant collections in various countries. BD’s special funds help support traditional healers and their families, in an effort to encourage the transmission of their special knowledge to members of their own communities.

Kat lives part-time on the Big Island of Hawaii, where she helps steward native forest and a collection of tropical medicinal plants.