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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:20260521T163438Z
UID:afabf744-5945-f111-bec7-7c1e52046848
CREATED:20260501T122839Z
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.\n\nThis talk analyses
  the work of the MAPS project at two scales\, demonstrating the coproducti
 on of disease ecology and counterinsurgency in Malaya and reconceptualisin
 g its region-spanning geography. It situates the Project amidst a post-194
 7 pivot from disease ecology funded by colonial plantations to research su
 pported by Anglo-American militaries\, as Malaya became embroiled in blood
 y counter-insurgency during the “Emergency”. This research entailed an
  unprecedentedly thorough investigation of the Malayan landscape — from 
 underground caves to rainforest canopies — in the service of colonial an
 d anticommunist war. At the same time\, the talk follows the Project looki
 ng outward\, as the hemispheric flights of birds opened up a new perspecti
 ve on Malaya as a tropical borderland northward of Australasia and southwa
 rd of distant but entangled Siberia.\n\nJack Greatrex is Assistant Profess
 or of Urban History at Singapore Management University. He completed a PhD
  at the University of Hong Kong after an MPhil in World History and BA (Hi
 story) at the University of Cambridge. He has worked on histories of infra
 structural assemblages in Hong Kong\, Cold War disease ecology in Southeas
 t Asia\, and networks of entomological and virological exchange between So
 utheast Asia and the islands of the South Pacific. His work has appeared i
 n\, or is due to appear in\, Medical Anthropology\, Roadsides\, Somatosphe
 re\, Medical History\, the Journal of Urban History\, Urban History\, and 
 the Journal of Asian Studies.
LAST-MODIFIED:20260501T122919Z
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:Jack Greatrex (Singapore)
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