The following research projects have been awarded connections funding:
Diasporic Landscapes: Family photos and the colonial archive
Dr Tara Puri (English, University of Bristol), Dr Mohini Chandra (Chelsea College of Art), Dr Charlotte Berry (Bristol Archives) and Ms Ellie Pidgeon (British Empire & Commonwealth Collection).
Using Bristol Archives’ British Empire and Commonwealth Collection this research will explore amateur family photographs of imperial subjects/migrants through the lens of nature. The team will think about what kind of evidence these photographs provide about the natural world and how newly arrived migrants adapted to it. The team will look to use this period of work to create a case study of selected photographs that make visible the clear links between people and places. This can act as a toolkit that may be useful to other archives in rethinking their collections and how they might be renewed by being opened up to new communities and audiences.
Reimagining Curriculums: Natural History
Sid Boyer (Rising Arts Agency), Dr Alice Would (History, University of Bristol), Isla Gladstone (Bristol Museums), Michelle Graffagnino and David Rawlings (Education, University of Bristol).
This work will take a comprehensive and thoughtful approach to embedding marginalised and silenced voices into the new Natural History GCSE. The research team hope to untangle who gets to write curriculums and who profits from keeping them the same. They will also explore how natural history can be learned and taught through decolonised frameworks.
Practicing Return: Policy, power and partnership.
Mx Iman Sultan West (Artist), Isla Gladstone (Bristol Museum and Art Gallery), and Claudia Hildebrandt (Earth Sciences, University of Bristol).
Can natural sciences collections offer a new look at the processes and policies linked to repatriation of museum holdings by taking a place-based approach? This project aims to assess whether comparing repatriation practices at three institutions can:
- Establish a Bristol-based approach to repatriation of and culturally sensitive work with natural sciences specimens, informed by Bristol’s global-local history and multicultural communities.
- Expand repatriation beyond the physical return of objects to include wider restitutional efforts, re-indigenising collections and connecting past, present and future.
- Foster deeper cross-cultural dialogues where museums prioritise reciprocity and meaningful exchange.
Unearthing Stories: Plants, people, places
Tara Sachdeva (Compass Presents), Dr Ann Matchette (History of Art, University of Bristol), and Isla Gladstone (Bristol Museums).
Drawing primarily on the natural history collections at Bristol Museum, this project aims to make natural history collections more accessible by uncovering lost stories about the relationships between plants and people as well as co-designing creative methodologies for sharing collections with the public. The team hope to answer the questions:
- How might plants and contextual objects be used as catalysts for cross-cultural dialogue about our relationship to the natural world?
- What stories lie within these scientific collections, not just about plants but also about people and the values we ascribe to plants?
- What do practices of (re)naming and (re)framing plants reveal about their varied meanings, indigenous knowledge and alternative ways of knowing?
Exhausted Lives: The bitter juice of the cane never tasted
Cecilia Wallace, Emma Howgill (Special Collections, University of Bristol), Ana Castro-Castellon (Physical Geography, University of Bristol), and Zakiya Mckenzie (History, University of Bristol).
This project follows the currents that once carried sugar, rum, and enslaved people from Caribbean plantations to Bristol. Through examining the Pinney Papers, held within University of Bristol Special Collections, this project aims to chart how 18th and 19th century soil and water management on Nevis shaped both human and ecological exhaustion between Nevis and Bristol. By pairing archival analysis with contemporary environmental science, the team will surface submerged narratives, map their ecological afterlives and potentially translate these insights into principles for fair, climate-resilient water governance today. The project will demonstrate how postcolonial legacies of water economies can inform equitable futures.