At the height of the Second World War, the British Empire launched an ambitious campaign to eradicate locusts in East Africa, South Asia and the Middle East. The Anti-Locust Research Centre left behind an extensive and uncatalogued visual and textual archive, consisting of documents and correspondence, photographs and slides, films, maps, journals, scientific notes, field-guides and locust specimens, now housed in the Natural History Museum in London and the National Museum of Wales.

The AHRC, through a Science in Culture research award, has funded an interdisciplinary research project, The War of the Locust, 1940 – 1945, which brings together an historian, an artist, a forensic entomologist and an ecologist to explore the ALRC through its archive. This SKI event will discuss their collaborative research on the ALRC and this campaign, working with an archive, and the challenges of interdisciplinary work.

The project team consists of
Dr Robert Fletcher, Associate Professor of Britain and Empire, University of Warwick
Dr Amanda Thomson, Painting and Printmaking Department, Glasgow School of Art
Dr Katherine Brown, Institute of Criminal Justice Studies, University of Portsmouth
Dr Greg McInerney, Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick

This SKI event will reflect on the project and discuss working as an interdisciplinary team to explore and make sense of this archive