Hidden Histories of Exploration: Exhibiting Geographical Collections

该项目力求通过发展和传播以一个主要学术团体的收藏品为基础的关于这一主题的研究，增进对土著人民在勘探历史上所起作用的认识和理解。它直接建立在迄今为止作为澳大利亚人权委员会支持的合作博士奖的一部分进行的研究的基础上，并由PI与皇家地理学会合作监督（与英国地理学家研究所合作）该项目旨在通过在一个著名的大都市学习场所举办展览以及通过在线电子资源，并考虑对当代研究的更广泛的影响，以类似的收集材料有关的旅行，探索和发现。该项目回应了批评的标准叙述的航行的探索，这一直占主导地位的历史编纂的旅行和发现，直到最近。在这些文献中，探险家和旅行者所经过的领土上的居民的作用被置于边缘地位。虽然他们对地理知识发展的贡献得到了明确的承认，但却有一种倾向，即雅阁他们较低的地位--作为“当地的”助手或信息提供者，作为向导或搬运工，作为背景人物，而不是作为新知识生产的真正参与者。该项目旨在提供一个基于对RGS-IBG收藏的学术研究的替代视角。除了其特定的重点之外，该项目还具有与地理收藏研究相关的更广泛的方法和概念层面。这项研究提出了一些问题，即某些声音和经验在旅行和探险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。这些都是难以回答的难题：该项目的目的不仅是强调挑战，而且还提出可能的新方法，利用已建立的收藏，借鉴策展人和研究人员在英国、澳大利亚和美国相关收藏背景下开发的新方法。这些将是与展览同时举行的地理收藏国际讲习班的主题，该项目旨在激发对地理收藏的新思维，这些思维将在地理研究所-国际地理研究所和其他机构的教育和展览方案中有重要的实际应用。在该协会最近成功举办的跨越大陆系列展览（特别是那些专门介绍“孟买非洲人”和“从喀布尔到坎大哈”的展览）的基础上，预计该展览还将突出该协会收藏品中与少数民族社区特别有关的方面，这些少数民族社区与过去探险家访问过的地区有散居联系。该项目的这一方面将通过在学会网站上为广大用户设计的在线展览来维持。

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.