Jennifer Gold BA (Hons), MPhil

PhD Candidate

Jennifer's research concerns the spatiality of science, focusing on the scientific cultures of the British Colonial Forest Service in the late colonial period.

Biography

PhD Geography, University of Cambridge (2006-present)
MPhil Geographical Research, University of Cambridge (2005-6)
BA (Hons) Geography, University of Durham (2002-5)

Research

My research concerns the spatiality of science, focusing on the transformation in the scientific cultures of the British Overseas Civil Service (HM Colonial Service until 1954) in the late colonial and early post independence periods. The immediate postwar years witnessed rapid expansion in recruitment of scientific personnel within the Service as scientific expertise assumed a more central role in British imperial planning. Through oral historical testimony and archival research my thesis analyses the multifaceted webs of connections and changing scales of governance influencing these tropical experts in the period leading up to decolonization. It then charts the post independence reconfiguration of colonial scientific networks as overseas officers obtained second careers. This is demonstrated in particular by a case study of one scientific branch of the Service - the Colonial Forest Service.

Publications

Conference papers and seminars

Department of Geography Graduate Seminar, University of Cambridge, November 2006, "Encountering empire: examining the British Colonial Service through oral history and archival research."
Association of American Geographers Annual Conference, April 2007, "In the service of empire: the Imperial Forestry Institute, British Colonial Officer training and the historical geographies of scientific knowledge, 1935 - 1965."
British Society for the History of Science Postgraduate Conference, forthcoming January 2008, "The 'paradox of resettlement': the British Overseas Civil Service and the post-imperial reconfiguration of scientific networks, 1957-1981."
Association of American Geographers Annual Conference, forthcoming April 2008, "The paradox of resettlement': decolonization and the diasporic networks of the British Overseas Civil Service, 1957-1981."
Northern Rhodesia in the 1950s Symposium at the Centre for African Studies, Leiden, forthcoming September 2008

Teaching

Supervisor, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Paper 1A, Historical Geography

External activities

Postgraduate Fellow, Royal Geographical Society
Postgraduate Member, Association of American Geographers
Conference Organiser, Trinity College Arts and Humanities Symposium, 2007
Graduate President, Trinity College, University of Cambridge, 2006-7
Junior Research Associate, International Boundaries Research Unit, Department of Geography, Durham University, 2004