Cambridge University desires pupil to ‘decolonise the dodo’ | UK | News | EUROtoday

The University of Cambridge may “decolonise the dodo” beneath a brand new tax-payer funded mission.

It desires a PhD pupil to look at its vegetation and animals to search for imperial connections in its Museum of Zoology.

The pupil could be tasked with setting out how every little thing from tigers via to dodos might be linked to the “European colonial story”.

The mission would deal with racial concepts, “violent” colonial exercise and “resource exploitation,” stories The Telegraph.

The intention of the position, the commercial says, is to current the botany and zoology museum as extra numerous tin a bid to make folks “feel represented by museums”.

The mission itself is a part of the college’s effort to deal with its personal “legacies of enslavement and empire”. It will probably be supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, a physique that distributes taxpayer money.

The advert says the collections have “some of the world’s most celebrated animals and plants, from tigers to dodos and rhododendrons and tea.”

It adds: “Such specimens in our collections signify how colonial histories and environmental histories grew to become tied to the identical processes.”

It continues: “The outcomes of this project will be significant. They have the potential to help shape how the natural history museum sector grapples with understanding its colonial legacy.

“A far greater diversity of people were involved in the history of science – and society – than has traditionally been acknowledged.

“In this way it is hoped that more people will feel represented by museums.

“Cambridge’s natural history collections have always supported pioneering scientific research, but their potential for researching imperial cultural history is only just beginning to be realised.”

The position comes with a £19,000 stipend.

One prompt space to take a look at is the uncredited work of indigenuos figures who helped botanists and zoologists develop their collections.

The mission may additionally, The Telegraph reported, have a look at “violent colonial history” in addition to the human and environmental prices of colonialism.

It offers an inventory of areas the place there might be colonial hyperlinks, together with the dodo assortment. The fowl grew to become extinct within the seventeenth century after Europeans arrived in Mauritius.

The researcher would have entry to the college herbarium. It says this might permit them to look at the colonial connections of tea and rhododendrons.

Reform UK MP Lee Anderson says universities ought to “concentrate on solving present day problems” versus “wasting resources to decolonise the dodo”.

The University of Cambridge has been contacted for remark.