Hidden Histories of Exploration: Exhibiting Geographical Collections

该项目力求通过发展和传播主要学术团体收藏的有关这一主题的研究，增进对土著人民在探索史上所起作用的知识和了解。它直接建立在迄今为止作为AHRC支持并由PI与皇家地理学会(与英国地理学家协会)合作监督的合作博士奖的一部分的研究基础上。该项目寻求通过在一个著名的大都市学习网站上举办展览以及通过在线电子资源来开发这些知识并将其转移到公共领域，并考虑对与旅行、探索和发现有关的类似材料集合的当代研究的更广泛影响。该项目回应了对探索航行的标准叙述的批评，直到最近，这种描述一直主导着旅行和发现的历史学。在这些文献的大部分中，探险家和旅行者所经过的领土上的居民的角色被贬低到边缘。在他们对地理知识发展的贡献得到明确承认的地方，有一种倾向是给予他们较低的地位--作为“当地”助手或告密者、作为导游或搬运工、作为背景人物，而不是作为新知识生产的真正参与者。该项目试图提供一种基于对RGS-IBG收藏品的学术研究的另一种视角。除了其特定的重点之外，该项目还具有与地理收藏品研究有关的更广泛的方法和概念层面。这项研究提出了一些问题，即某些声音和经历在旅行和探索的档案记录中被系统地“隐藏”了多少，以及通过新的方法来“恢复”它们的可能性。这些都是棘手的问题，没有简单的答案：该项目的目的不仅是强调挑战，而且还建议可能的新方法来处理成熟的收藏品，借鉴英国、澳大利亚和美国的策展人和研究人员在相关收藏品方面开发的新方法。这些将是与展览同时举行的关于地理收藏的国际讲习班的主题。该项目旨在激发对地理收藏的新的思考方式，这将在RGS-IBG和其他机构的教育和展览计划中具有重要的实际应用。鉴于该协会最近在“跨越大陆”系列展览中取得的成功(特别是关于“孟买非洲人”和“从喀布尔到坎大哈”的展览)，预计该展览还将突出该协会对少数族裔社区特别感兴趣的收藏品，这些少数族裔社区与过去探险家访问过的地区有散居国外的联系。该项目的这一方面将通过协会网站上的一个在线展览来维持，该展览将为广泛的用户设计。

This project seeks to enhance knowledge and understanding of the part played by indigenous peoples in the history of exploration, by developing and disseminating research on the subject based in the collections of a major scholarly society. It builds directly on research undertaken to date as part of a Collaborative Doctoral Award supported by AHRC and supervised by the PI in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) This project seeks to develop and transfer this knowledge into the public domain, by means of an exhibition in a prominent site of metropolitan learning as well as by an online electronic resource, and to consider the wider implications for contemporary research into similar collections of material relating to travel, exploration and discovery.The project responds to criticisms of the standard narratives of voyages of exploration, which have until recently dominated the historiography of travel and discovery. In much of this literature, the role of the inhabitants of territory through which explorers and travellers passed is relegated to the margins. Where their contibutions to the development of geographical knowledge have been explicitly acknowledged, there has been a tendency to accord them a lower status - as 'local' assistants or informants, as guides or porters, as background characters, rather than as truly participants in the production of new knowledge. The project seeks to offer an alternative perspective grounded in scholarly research into the RGS-IBG collections.In addition to its specific focus, the project has wider methodological and conceptual dimensions relating to research with geographical collections. The research raises questions about the extent to which certain voices and experiences have been systematically 'hidden' in the archival record of travel and exploration, and the possibility of their 'recovery' by means of new approaches to such collections.These are difficult questions which have no easy answers: the purpose of the project is to highlight not only the challenges, but also to suggest possible new ways of working with well-established collections, drawing on new approaches developed by curators and researchers in the context of related collections in Britain, Australia and the USA. These will be the subject of an international workshop on geographical collections held in parallel with the exhibition itself.The project is designed to stimulate new ways of thinking about geographical collections which will have significant practical applications within the educational and exhibition programmes of the RGS-IBG and other bodies. On the basis of the success of the Society's recent exhibitions in the Crossing Continents series (notably those devoted to 'Bombay Africans' and 'From Kabul to Kandahar') it is envisaged that the exhibition will also highlight aspects of the Society's collections of particular interest to minority ethnic communities which have diaspora links to the areas visited by explorers in the past. This aspect of the project will be sustained through an online exhibition on the Society's website, which will be designed for a wide range of users.