The War of the Locust: is an AHRC funded collaborative and interdisciplinary research project bringing together an historian (Dr Robert Fletcher, Warwick, Principal Investigator), an artist (Dr Amanda Thomson, Glasgow School of Art) a forensic entomologist (Dr Katherine Brown, Portsmouth) and an ecologist (Dr Greg McInerny, Warwick).

Working through the archive of the Anti-Locust Research Centre material and specimens held at the Natural History Museum and the National Museum of Wales, the research focuses on the remarkable campaign, over the course of the twentieth-century, to monitor and eradicate the desert locust. Outbreaks of the desert locust – Schistocerca gregaria – have plagued agricultural societies for millennia. How states have perceived and dealt with this threat has not only affected the livelihoods of generations of farmers and pastoralists; it has played an important part in the making and unmaking of states’ legitimacy.

A collaborative and interdisciplinary project, supported by an AHRC Science in Culture Developmental Award, the project also reflects upon the nature of interdisciplinary work itself.

This first seminar, held at the University of Warwick, will reflect on the project so far.