Colonial Histories of Australian Mammal Collections in Cambridge

We have been researching the origins of our Australian mammal collections, looking into the collectors and those who worked alongside them, and the honest histories of how these specimens came to be in our Museum.

Outline of the Australian mammal collection project

The University Museum of Zoology has an exceptional Australian collection, which has underpinned research into evolution and natural history, but the human social stories it can tell have not been well explored. Starting in 2022, this project has uncovered untold narratives of how colonial collectors worked, and who they worked with. It has shed light on the links between natural history and troubling colonial history. It has sought to identify those people who contributed so much expertise to the history of science and museums, but who were typically omitted from popular accounts of these histories, such as women and Indigenous collectors.

This research was undertaken by the Museum’s Assistant Director, Jack Ashby, primarily in 2022 and 2023. The project was made possible through a Headley Fellowship with Art Fund.

These webpages are arranged by the person the Museum received specimens from, or the “collector” associated with different batches of specimens (although in reality the named “collector” often obtained the specimens from un-named First Nations Australians). They are intended to be of interest to anyone curious about how colonial collections come together, as well as for other museums in Europe and Australia which have collections associated with the same people. These pages do not represent all the people associated with our Australian mammal collections, but rather those whose stories are most representative of colonial-era practices.