British Academy grant achievement
Sabine Clarke wins British Academy Small Grant for project 'Insects, Empire and Britain's 'Warfare State'.
The project, which focuses on the connections between locust control in Africa, the experiences of the Second World War and Britain’s post war chemical warfare programme.
The grant will allow Sabine to consult material at the Kenyan National Archives, the archives of the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in Rome and the Natural History Museum and the National Archives in London that will shed light on the ways in which anti-locust campaigns were able to utilise the skills of pilots, who had flown with the RAF during the war, and benefit from new technologies that were developed at Porton Down as part of military R&D during the 1940s and 1950s.
The project will show for the first time the ways in which Britain’s colonies were important for testing new chemicals and dispersal methods that were key for both the fight against important pests, and also for new methods of warfare that were developed after 1945.