The War of the Locust: science, politics, culture and collaboration in the Anti-Locust Research Centre, 1940-45

沙漠蝗虫的爆发- Schistocerca gregaria -自有记录以来一直困扰着农业社会。国家如何看待和处理这一威胁不仅影响到几代农民和牧民的生计，而且在国家合法性的形成和瓦解方面发挥了重要作用。该项目汇集了一位历史学家，一位法医昆虫学家，一位艺术家和一位生态学家，以审查有史以来为应对这一威胁而做出的最突出的国际努力之一-大英帝国反蝗虫研究中心（ALRC）的记录。在20世纪，亚洲法律资源中心利用昆虫学家、探险家、气象学家、制图员、电影制片人、殖民地管理人员、外交官和军事人员的专门知识，进行了前所未有的努力，以监测、控制和消灭地球上大片地区的沙漠蝗虫。在中东第二次世界大战期间，亚洲法律资源中心在其活动的高峰期引起了当时一些最重要的科学家和政治家的注意。它的成功是建立在广泛不同形式的专业知识的合作基础上的;它的运动为至今仍然存在的国际控制体系奠定了基础。但它的记录并非没有挫折，参与者之间不同的学科观点之间的差异以及对目标和更广阔世界的不同解释导致了妥协和紧张。这个项目汇集了历史，生态学，昆虫学和艺术，以审查防蝗研究中心的工作，以及它留下的独特的和迄今未开发的档案。亚洲法律资源中心本质上是一项跨学科的工作;它需要以跨学科的方式审查其记录。每个合作研究员带来了自己的学科专业知识，承担关键ALRC活动，从帝国官僚机构和战时地缘政治的导航到其标本采样和预测技术，其视觉媒体的使用，以及它促进和铭刻的多种形式的环境知识。但在整个过程中，该项目也探索了跨学科工作本身的过程和性质，研究了在ALRC的保护伞下，非常不同的个人和学科如何相互交谈，以及我们作为共同调查员如何在重建其活动时进行合作。包括大英帝国和现代中东的历史学家;昆虫学家和气候变化，粮食安全和生物恐怖主义的可能性的学生;学者和从业者关注科学和政策之间的对话和摩擦;更广泛的观众对如何代表“移民”，“害虫”和控制系统感兴趣。我们的展览和艺术家的书，将探索档案中的诗学和隐喻，也带来了我们的发现与意想不到的观众接触的可能性：那些偶然遇到画廊/展览空间的人，他们的好奇心被激起。

Outbreaks of the desert locust - Schistocerca gregaria - have plagued agricultural societies since the beginnings of recorded history. How states have perceived and dealt with this threat has not only affected the livelihoods of generations of farmers and pastoralists; it has played an important part in the making and unmaking of states' legitimacy. This project brings together an historian, a forensic entomologist, an artist and an ecologist to examine the record of one of the most prominent international efforts ever made to counter this threat - the British Empire's Anti-Locust Research Centre (ALRC). Over the course of the twentieth-century, the ALRC drew on the expertise of entomologists, explorers, meteorologists, cartographers, filmmakers, colonial administrators, diplomats and military personnel in an unprecedented attempt to monitor, control and eradicate the desert locust across great swathes of the earth. At the height of its activities, during the Second World War in the Middle East, the ALRC came to the attention of some of the foremost scientists and statesmen of the day. Its successes were built on the collaboration of widely varying forms of expertise; its campaigns laid the foundations for systems of international control that still endure. But its record was not without frustrations, with compromises and tensions born of discrepancies between the differing disciplinary views of its participants, and of varying interpretations of their objective and the wider world.This project brings together history, ecology, entomology and art to examine the work of the Anti-Locust Research Centre, and the unique and hitherto unexplored archive it left behind. The ALRC was inherently an interdisciplinary undertaking; it requires an interdisciplinary approach to examine its record. Each Co-Investigator brings their own disciplinary expertise to bear upon key ALRC activities, from its navigation of imperial bureaucracies and wartime geopolitics to its specimen sampling and forecasting techniques, its use of visual media, and the multiple forms of environmental knowledge it promoted and inscribed. But throughout, the project also explores the process and nature of interdisciplinary work itself, examining how very different individuals and disciplines spoke to one another under the umbrella of the ALRC, and how we as Co-Investigators come to collaborate as we reconstruct its activities.This project is of interest to a wide number of communities both inside and outside of academia, including historians of the British Empire and the modern Middle East; entomologists and students of climate change, food security and bioterrorism possibilities; scholars and practitioners concerned with the dialogues and frictions between science and policy; and wider audiences interested in how 'migrants', 'pests' and systems of control are represented. Our exhibition and artist's book, which will explore the poetics and metaphors within the archive, also bring the possibility of our findings engaging with unanticipated audiences: those who encounter the gallery/exhibition space by chance and whose curiosity becomes piqued.