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

这个项目致力于去殖民化维多利亚时代的历史和环境科学。我们将讨论欧洲人对非洲的“发现”对当今历史和生态的影响，在这一时期，“伟大的”白人探险家采用了分类和地形实践，确定了全球北方定义的参数，通过这些参数来解释全球南方的环境。这对现在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。我们的案例研究集中在尚待研究的维多利亚时期探险家弗兰克·奥茨的藏品上，这些藏品保存在汉普郡北部塞尔伯恩的吉尔伯特·怀特之家博物馆。我们将把这些收藏作为非殖民化工作的基础，而不是作为一种传记恢复的行为，揭示被边缘化的土著声音和迄今为止不为人知的活动。这项研究将成为与博物馆、致力于非殖民化的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，推动非殖民化叙事向前发展。

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.