Decolonising Victorian histories: Frank Oates, geographic exploration and teaching imperial history and environmental science

该项目致力于维多利亚历史和环境科学的非殖民化。我们将讨论欧洲人对非洲的“发现”达到狂热程度的时期对当今历史和生态的影响，当时“伟大的”白色探险家采用分类学和地形学方法，固定了全球北方定义的参数，以此来解释全球南方的环境。这对目前的影响是显而易见的。环境科学缺乏多样性，探索和知识创造的历史仍然总是以最小化非洲人作用的方式讲述。这种旧的模式需要新的洞察力和新的非殖民化的能量。我们的案例研究的重点是尚未研究收集维多利亚探险家弗兰克奥茨，在北方汉普郡塞尔伯恩的吉尔伯特白色的房子博物馆举行。我们将与收集工作不是作为传记恢复的行为，而是作为非殖民化工作的基础，揭示边缘化的土著声音和活动，迄今为止闻所未闻。这项研究将成为与博物馆，非殖民化策展专家以及历史和地理/环境科学教师网络持续合作的基础。由此产生的教学资源和实践的共同创造将通过探索下一代学生可以学习更多样化和包容性的社会文化和环境历史的方式，推动非殖民化叙事。

This project is dedicated to decolonising Victorian histories and environmental science. We shall address the present-day historical and ecological implications of a period in which the 'discovery' of Africa by Europeans was reaching fever pitch, when 'great' white explorers employed taxonomic and topographical practices that fixed Global North-defined parameters by which environments in the Global South were to be interpreted. The legacies of this for the present are clear. The environmental sciences lack diversity, and the histories of exploration and knowledge creation are still invariably told in ways that minimise the roles of Africans. This old model requires new insight and a new, decolonised energy. Our case study focuses on the yet to be studied collection of Victorian explorer Frank Oates, held at the Gilbert White's House museum in Selborne, northern Hampshire. We will work with the collection not as an act of biographical recovery but as the basis of a decolonisation work revealing marginalised indigenous voices and activities hitherto untold. This research will form the basis for a sustained collaboration with the museum, a curatorial specialist working on decolonising, and a network of History and Geography/environmental science teachers. The resultant co-creation of teaching resources and practices will move the decolonisation narrative forward by exploring ways the next generation of students can learn of more diverse and inclusive socio-cultural and environmental histories.