Brigstow aims to support radically interdisciplinary and co-produced research, so we’re looking for teams from a number of disciplines and practices who are interested in exploring the research value of natural history collections and archives, and postcolonial methods of museum and archive practices.

Who is this for?

While we aim to be as broad as possible in who we fund, here is a flavour of the type of people we had in mind.

Whilst this might particularly appeal to people in earth science, environmental humanities, animal studies, botany or post-colonial studies, we are keen to include expertise from across all disciplines both within and beyond the University. As with all activity we support at Brigstow we are keen to engage creative ways of thinking and working which may include those already working in museum practices but not exclusively. Your work could focus on what’s in the collections themselves, or how we present, study and care for natural history collections that exist. We’re looking to build research teams that span both academic research staff and collaborators from outside of the University of Bristol.

You might already have an idea and be looking to extend your team or just be interested in the topic and want to connect with people to build something fresh. No matter what stage you’re at, we’d love you to join us.

How did we choose this theme?

This theme has evolved from a previous Ideas Lunch hosted by Brigstow early in 2024 called The Elephant in the Room: Animal Studies, Postcolonialism and Museums/Collecting. This meeting brought together people from various disciplines and organisations working in the sphere of postcolonial natural history collections.

In addition, over the past couple of years, we’ve seen a collection of different ideas, projects and relational research around this topic within our community, so we wanted to build on that energy.

This thematic cycle is formed of three stages. Find out more about our funding model.