Harker Glacier, Moraine Fjord, South Georgia.Taken by Frank Hurley.
We are delighted to welcome our newest Collaborative Doctoral Award student, Alice Oates, who has started her PhD project exploring the governance of Antarctica.
Alice, who is undertaking her PhD at the University of Cambridge, will focus on the Halley Bay Research Station and use a range of collections and archival material to provide an account of the emergence of scientific governance in Antarctica. She will draw on items from the Society, the Royal Society, the Scott Polar Research Institute, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research, and the British Antarctic Survey.
Halley Bay was established by the Royal Society in 1956 in preparation for the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58, and became a critical centre for observations in global science, including the discovery of the ozone hole in the 1980s.
The histories of Halley Bay have never been fully investigated, yet they involve many important actors in British post-war science and international governance. And with the bicentenary of Antarctica’s discovery approaching, this is a particularly timely project.
Over the last 10 years we have hosted 12 PhD students carrying out collaborative research on our Collections, supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Find out more about the Collaborative Doctoral Awards.