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SUMMARY:Emergency Ecology: Birds\, Blood\, War\, and the Figuring of Malay
 a as Australian-Siberian Borderland\, 1947-1974
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20260525T160000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20260525T173000
DTSTAMP:20260521T163414Z
UID:45d47695-593a-f111-88b4-6045bdfc3d0d
CREATED:20260417T123309Z
DESCRIPTION:A metal band from the leg of a shot heron was sent to US ornit
 hologist Elliott McClure in 1964. The bird had been killed in Kota Bharu\,
  Kelantan\, on the east coast of tropical Malaysia. It had been banded\, h
 owever\, at distant Lake Khanka — some 3230 miles away in Primorsky Krai
 \, Siberia. As part of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway\, such hemispher
 e-spanning flights by birds were not uncommon — they were seasonal event
 s. But McClure’s attention to these flights marked something distinctive
 . Between 1963 and 1974\, McClure's "Migratory Animal Pathological Survey"
  (MAPS) attempted to elucidate the possible connexions between the avian f
 lyway and zoonotic disease\, investigating especially the “Group B” fa
 mily of encephalitis viruses which were suspected to be harboured by pigs\
 , spread by mosquitoes\, and seeded by birds in a hemispheric arc from Aus
 tralia through Malaya to northern Japan and Siberia.\nThis talk analyses t
 he work of the MAPS project at two scales\, demonstrating the coproduction
  of disease ecology and counterinsurgency in Malaya and reconceptualising 
 its region-spanning geography. It situates the Project amidst a post-1947 
 pivot from disease ecology funded by colonial plantations to research supp
 orted by Anglo-American militaries\, as Malaya became embroiled in bloody 
 counter-insurgency during the “Emergency”. This research entailed an u
 nprecedentedly thorough investigation of the Malayan landscape — from un
 derground caves to rainforest canopies — in the service of colonial and 
 anticommunist war. At the same time\, the talk follows the Project looking
  outward\, as the hemispheric flights of birds opened up a new perspective
  on Malaya as a tropical borderland northward of Australasia and southward
  of distant but entangled Siberia.
LAST-MODIFIED:20260417T123431Z
LOCATION:Schwarzman Centre - Room 00.063\, Room 00.063 Schwarzman Centre R
 adcliffe Observatory Quarter\, Woodstock Road Oxford Oxfordshire OX2 6GG U
 nited Kingdom
SPEAKER:Dr Jack Greatrex (Singapore)
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