Scott Polar Research Institute 100 Years Charlotte Connelly Tells Us About the History of SPRI
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landmark Summer 2020 I Edition 8 Scott Polar Research Institute 100 years Charlotte Connelly tells us about the history of SPRI Geographies of Health Alice Reid on geographies of health and demography The Department of Geography alumni magazine ©Sir Cam Inside Scott Polar Research Institute 100 years 4 Geographies of Health 6 Alumni views 8 A more diverse future for Geography 9 Conservation Leadership 10 Managing disasters 12 Welcome to the 2020 edition of landmark e always expected 2020 to delivered remotely during the Easter Term, and be a memorable year at the undergraduate examinations moved online. It is Department, but perhaps not for testimony to the extraordinary commitment of W the reasons that have dominated colleagues that we were able to manage all these the last few months, during which coping with changes reasonably well, while still delivering Covid-19 has overshadowed all our activities. In this the best possible experiences for students, and edition of Landmark, we celebrate the centenary of being mindful of the wellbeing and health of all the founding of the Scott Polar Research Institute concerned. I am very fortunate to be surrounded and a decade since the launch of the flagship by people who care, and who have worked MPhil programme in Conservation Leadership. tirelessly to support the Department through this We look forward to welcoming the first cohorts of period. students for our two new Masters programmes in Anthropocene Studies and Holocene Climates with We have seen other creative ways to adapt to the a feature on our colleague, Amy Donovan, who new challenges that we all face. Our postgraduate will be a key member of the team delivering both students, many of whom will be unable to ©Sir Cam courses. undertake fieldwork for some months, have been holding workshops to consider the impacts of This has been a year to recognise the extraordinary Covid-19 on their research plans. We have curated work and contributions that Geographers make to publicly available resources to support remote our world. Our alumni profile features work being research by our undergraduates, many of whom done to support the most vulnerable groups who were expecting to travel over the summer for are impacted by Covid-19, while Alice Reid reflects their dissertations. May Week was suspended, but on the longer historical geographies of disease and students and staff came together in a celebration pandemics. of the Cambridge community in the May Week Mega Event – unsurprisingly, Geographers were Over the last few months, we have reached out very visible in the organisation of this event. to other alumni who are working in diverse ways Towards the beginning of July, we held our first to support the response to the current crisis, and alumni webinar, which was an opportunity to have featured some of their stories on our social celebrate the career of Bill Adams, who retires this media pages. The last few months have also seen year. Thank you to the hundreds who watched this a real focus on the black community's continued live, and made it a very special farewell to Bill; for experiences of structural inequality and violence. those who were unable to attend, the event is now There is a lot to be done here, and Geography has a visible on the Department’s alumni webpages. key role, both in acknowledging the legacies of our discipline, but also in being a progressive voice for We look forward to working more closely with change. More locally, we have to focus on our own our Alumni over the next 12 months and hope work, especially around issues of inclusion and that you will be able to join us at our next online representation within the student body – I hope event as part of the University Alumni Festival in you’ll enjoy reading about one of our particularly September. inspirational current undergraduates, who has been doing some amazing work in this area. This has been a very different year to what I had imagined I might expect during my tenure as Head of Department. We had to cancel our Easter undergraduate fieldtrips, and then move rapidly as the University and the country went into Prof Bhaskar Vira lockdown in March. Teaching and learning were Head of Department landmark 3 Scott Polar Research Institute 100 years This year marks 100 years since the opening of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI). Museum Curator Charlotte Connelly tells us about the history of SPRI. ©Sir Cam Figure 1. Detail from the Antarctic ceiling mural in the memorial hall of the Scott Polar Research Institute. (Image courtesy of the Scott Polar Research Institute, 4 Summer 2020 I Edition 6 University of Cambridge he building would contain these research rooms on the first floor. The attic will be at least; a practical museum of used for exhibition of pictures, and for museum Polar equipment… the things storage.’ “T explorers want to see and handle and know the use and cost of, such as camp gear, The new building could not be erected soon instruments, clothing etc.; a comprehensive library enough. Between the geological specimens that of Polar literature and maps, not only narratives… Debenham and others were working with, and but all the scientific reports; thirdly a set of rooms for the accumulation of expedition gear, books and the use of people undertaking research, these people other items for the new institute’s collection, by might be returned scientists, budding explorers or 1925 the University Council noted that ‘some people working up papers on Polar subjects who accommodation [for the SPRI] will be required at 1 require the facilities.” once, as material, weighing about 2½ tons, has already arrived.’ Frank Debenham was the driving force behind the founding of the Scott Polar Research Institute. The memorialisation elements of the building are His vision, as outlined above, was for a place still evident today. A niche above the entrance on that brought together polar researchers and Lensfield Road houses a bust of Scott, cast from a resources for the betterment of polar expeditions sculpture by Scott’s widow, Kathleen, then Lady and scientific investigation. As Debenham Young. Inside the entrance, the ceiling of the and several of the other veterans of the British Memorial Hall features two impressive painted Antarctic Expedition 1910-13 (Terra Nova) had maps of the Arctic and Antarctic, complete with found themselves in Cambridge writing up the names of explorers and their ships (figure 1). results, and, as Debenham argued, because Cambridge had ‘furnished more polar scientists The SPRI as a whole continues to serve two than all the other English universities put purposes. It is a multi-disciplinary centre together’, the University of Cambridge seemed of excellence in the study of the Arctic the obvious fit. and Antarctic, and part of the University of Cambridge. It is also a national memorial to In his letter to Oriana Wilson (the widow of Captain R. F. Scott and those who died with him Edward Wilson, who died with Scott), one of the in Antarctica: descendants of explorers come many persuasive letters he wrote to encourage to remember their ancestors and spend time support for the proposed institute, Debenham with the collections of material left behind by clearly articulated the challenges the new venture faced: them; visitors can spend time reading the final accounts of Scott and his men; and new deposits “The proposed Polar Research Department, even are made to the collections enabling public though attached to the University of Cambridge, access. is still a national memorial (the research rooms become available to all students of whatever SPRI continues with both purposes. It is a qualification or origin besides polar leanings), public-facing museum, library and memorial, but a Scott School of Geography becomes a local welcoming visitors to learn and reflect on memorial, and in fact as much a possession of polar exploration. It is also a centre for research Cambridge as the Sedgwick Museum or Cavendish into polar subjects ranging from the physical Laboratory. The two things must therefore be kept understanding of glaciology through to the distinct.”2 anthropology of Arctic peoples. The public-facing aspect of the SPRI was reinforced in 2010 with In March 1920, the trustees of the Scott Memorial the reopening of the newly refurbished Polar Fund wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of the Museum, which professionalised the museum University of Cambridge stating that the trustees and reinterpreted the collections. were ‘prepared to grant £6,000 toward the provision of a suitable Wing, or Annexe, forming part of a larger building devoted to Geography’. However, when the SPRI’s home did eventually open in 1934, it was in its own dedicated building, ‘with two floors and an attic, and the accommodation includes a museum and a Charlotte Connelly is Museum Curator at Director’s room on the ground floor; a library and the Scott Polar Research Institute Find out more: 1 F. Debenham, letter to ‘Mrs Bill’ (Oriana Wilson, widow of Edward A. Wilson, who perished with Robert F. Scott), Cambridge, 26 October 1919, Scott Polar Visit the The Polar Museum collection Research Institute, MSS in ‘Working files, SPRI history, inception’. 2 ibid online at spri.cam.ac.uk/museum 3 Debenham, op. cit. (note i), emphasis in original. Speak, Deb: geographer, scientist, Antarctic explorer (Polar Publishing, Guildford, 2008), p. 73. Cambridge University Reporter, 21 February 1933, p. 716. Cambridge University Reporter, 3 November 1925, p. 253. landmark 5 Geographies of Health Dr Alice Reid, University Senior Lecturer, working with the Cambridge Group for the History of Population and Social Structure, reflects on the current pandemic as she prepares for her course on the Geographies of Health.