The colonisation of Burma did not only affect humans, it had huge ramifications for the country's animal population. This aspect of colonial rule has been neglected by historians. Despite this, the centrality of animals to British rule in Burma was apparent in a host of different areas. Elephant labour was essential for imperial commercial interests, particularly to the lucrative timber trade. Elephants were also used extensively by the state for military transportation as well as for urban and railway construction. Dogs, rats and mosquitoes were vectors of diseases that posed risks to the health of both the ruling British population as well as to their colonised subjects. Snakes too were viewed by the British as a potent danger to life. As a result, colonial officials sought out ways of managing, and often destroying, these dangerous animals. Other animals were killed principally for sport, since big game hunting was central to imperial identity and Burma was a popular site for shooting. In contrast, the deaths of some animals were a cause for concern. The plight of the Irrawaddy dolphins and the sea-turtles that frequented the Burma delta was a marker of ecological deterioration resulting from the expansion of rice cultivation in the late-nineteenth century. Animals were also important in anti-colonial politics. Burmese nationalists used animals symbolically in their campaigns, and the ethical treatment of animals became a battleground upon which British imperialists and Burmese Buddhist nationalists each attempted to claim moral superiority. Burma makes a particularly important case study for the colonial history of human-animal relationships because of three distinctive features: the prominence of animals in anti-colonial politics; the scale of environmental change in the delta; and its role as a site for imperial studies of particular animal species, especially elephants, snakes and mosquitoes. The wider implications of this project are significant. It is of increasing importance to learn more about the ecological impact of human societies, and research into the effect of colonisation on the animal populations of Burma will produce vital data on a crucial historical period marked by rapid modernisation. In addition, as Burma moves into a phase of more intensive global interaction and economic development, reflecting on the colonial period will aid our understanding of the current challenges of managing the effects of this transformation on Burma's wildlife. Through archival research, I will uncover both British and Burmese writings about animals. Reading across different genres (scientific texts, newspaper stories, bureaucratic government reports, novels, amongst others) the project will reassess the much contested impact of colonisation on Burma, examining how human-animal relations were re-figured in the colonial encounter. It will be one of the first research projects to bring the growing field of animal history into the history of Southeast Asia, and through this transform medical, cultural, environmental and socio-economic histories of the region. The fellowship will develop my skills in leading and managing a pioneering research project into a new area of historical research. The published outputs resulting from the fellowship will enhance my status as a research leader in the field of Burmese history and imperial history. As a fellow I will forge new interdisciplinary connections between Southeast Asian history, animal studies and the environmental humanities. The fellowship will also enable me to make collaborative links with the Bristol Museum, and to develop a creative and interactive website to engage with the general public.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries it is estimated that 12 million people were captured as slaves or sold into slavery in a trade that took them from their homes in Africa to plantations in the Americas. Despite having been much studied and debated, the slave trade continues to provoke intense academic and public interest because there is still so much we do not know about slavery. While historical documentation can tell us about the workings of the slave trade and the slave owners, we know very little about the everyday experience of slaves from their own perspective. What was it like to be enslaved? How did the natural environment, landscape, living conditions and diet that slaves experienced affect their health, wellbeing and emotional lives? This project aims to bring together archaeological scientists, writers and literary scholars to explore what it was like to be enslaved. Both scientists and humanities scholars have attempted to understand this experience: archaeologists examine the physical human skeletal remains of the enslaved, uncovering details about the birth place, health, well-being and traumatic injuries sustained by the slaves. In contrast, writers combine existing historical information with their own imaginative impulses to represent individual experiences of slavery. While archaeologists' and writers' aims are similar, their methods are different. We aim to begin a dialogue between these groups, to explore how literary and archaeological narratives of slave lives might influence and inform one another to improve our understanding of what is was like to be a slave. We have three main aims: 1. to stimulate new ways of thinking about and researching the lived environment of slaves. We plan to hold a series of workshops between archaeological scientists and creative writers from the Bristol based collective Our Stories Make Waves. Questions we will ask each other include: What was it like to be a slave? How can the information provided by archaeological science inspire and inform new creative pieces? What is it that authors really want to know about the lives of slaves that archaeology has not yet addressed? Could literary representations of slavery provoke new questions in archaeological science? Through close collaboration between the writers and archaeological scientists we will identify gaps in our knowledge, and consider how they might be addressed through archaeological and literary methods combined. 2. to explore the intersection between archaeological science and literary studies and to stimulate new models for collaboration. To what extent do literary authors engage with archaeological science? How do archaeologists use literature (consciously or otherwise) in their academic and popular writing? We will ask such questions not only with reference to the lived environment of the slave, but also explore them more widely through holding an academic conference. We will investigate the problems which arise when researchers from such different disciplines work together, and provide a forum to discuss how to overcome these problems. 3. to promote public understanding of slavery and of how archaeologists and authors understand the past. We all know what it was like to be a slave... or do we? How is the public's understanding of the lives of slaves created? Through public events we will ask members of the public to think about how our knowledge of slavery is produced, and to consider the interplay between the arts and sciences. The events will include performances of original work produced by the creative writers as a result of their encounter with the archaeologists. This project has the potential to change the way that both academics and the public think about the relationship between the arts and sciences. It also presents us with the opportunity to think in new ways about the lives of slaves, ways which involve emotion and imagination as well as scientific analysis.

This project is a collaboration between researchers at the University of Bristol; the community groups, Outstories Bristol and Freedom Youth; Bristol City Council and Bristol Record Office. It follows on from the AHRC-funded grant, Know Your Bristol On The Move. The project engages lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) residents of Bristol in researching, writing and mapping LGBT history using digital tools. The aim is to mainstream LGBT history as part of the official history of Bristol, and through doing so, to raise the voices of LGBT people in the public eye, in the planning process and in local schools. New material on Bristol's LGBT history will be gathered at a series of events, as well as through in-depth oral history interviews conducted by volunteers who will be trained over the course of the project. The collected material will be digitally photographed or recorded and, along with existing LGBT archive materials held at BRO, will be uploaded to Bristol City Council's online historical mapping website, Know Your Place (KYP). KYP is a visual representation of the Historic Environment Record which Bristol City Council refers to for placemaking and when making planning decisions. The inclusion of LGBT history on the map, and therefore on the Historic Environment Record, provides a way for LGBT voices to intervene in the formal planning process. In order to ensure that collected material is readily accessible to LGBT communities and can continue to be added to beyond the lifetime of the project, we will create a user-friendly interface embedded in Outstories Bristol's own website. This interface will also be published as a generic open-source Wordpress plugin that can be downloaded and used by other community groups to display their own historical map layer from KYP or, indeed, any other Arc-Gis map database. Since KYP is set to expand across the South West, the potential user base for this is very high. The material collected by volunteers will also be used to produce a series of new resources, including digital story-maps (digital stories where each image or text links to a place on the map) that highlight the distinctive experiences of different groups within the LGBT community (e.g. lesbian, transgender), and a mobile app that will enable engagement with Bristol's LGBT history through walking tours. Working with the LBGT youth group, Freedom Youth and Bristol University's student society, LGBT+, we will co-develop and co-deliver a series of Key Stage 4 curriculum resources. A key outcome of the schools work will be tackling homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools. While the university's role here is key, it is by no means the lead partner. This project was initiated by Outstories Bristol and has been co-designed with them. This process of co-production is central to the project's innovative nature and will play an crucial role in its success. The project will reach a section of the Bristol population which has been historically marginalised and is largely invisible in mainstream historical accounts of the city. It will allow this group to intervene in the planning process and promote intergenerational dialogue and support through the connection between older interviewees and Freedom Youth. It will mainstream LGBT history by including it on the official Bristol City Council digital history map, Know Your Place, and by embedding it within the curriculum in local schools.

The aim of this project is to use VR to recreate an approximation of the historical experiences (mental and somatic) of individuals consulting the ancient oracle of Zeus at Dodona and then, through user analysis, to investigate how such a recreation can help to advance understanding of (i) an ancient historical context and individual historical experiences of that context; and (ii) the design and deployment of multi-sensory VR experiences for research and educational purposes. This will be achieved by building a VR recreation of the ancient Greek oracle of Zeus and Dione at Dodona (the VRO). The VRO will, on the one hand, address questions of subjective historical experience by creating a convincing reality that will then enable the detailed exploration of the process, experience and effects of ancient oracular consultation; and, on the other hand, facilitate further research into the design of VR technologies for communication of historical experience, including both museums and classroom settings. The VRO will recreate the experience of consulting the ancient Greek oracle of Zeus and Dione at Dodona in NW Greece during the Classical period. A broad constituency of ancient society visited this oracle: evidence shows that Dodona was consulted not only by community leaders, but also by ordinary men, women, and even slaves. This will enable the project to encompass a diverse range of ancient experiences. Moreover, the site has yielded thousands of lead tablets inscribed with questions that visitors posed to the oracle-remarkable documents for the ancient world. They show the everyday anxieties that prompted people to consult the gods, about, for example, travel, business and relationships. Alongside the question tablets, the ancient sources offer myriad possibilities for how the oracle worked, some focusing on Dodona's sacred oak tree, others on the priests and priestesses at the site. This project will explore--and aim to recreate--the diverse experiences of consulting Dodona, by commissioning and working with a VR company to develop a virtual reality oracle (VRO). Using the question tablets found at the site, and informed by specialists in ancient Greek religion and divination, with further support from the Ephorate of Ioannina (near ancient Dodona), the VRO experience will be built around a set of stories about ancient individuals. It will evoke different contexts and subjective experiences of uncertainty and explore the various possible methods of consulting the oracle, helping historians to better understand and differentiate among these mechanisms. The design phase of the VRO will also be informed by the participation of teachers, students and museum/cultural heritage curators, who will help to ensure that the VRO excels in communicating information to different user groups. In the second half of the project, the project will investigate user responses to the VRO both qualitatively and experimentally. This will enhance the project's ancient historical research into the experience of ancient oracular consultation: analysis of user responses by psychologists and neuroscientists will allow the project team to gauge the sensory and cognitive affects of oracular consultation, and to differentiate between different possible modes of divination. User analysis will also be used to examine how VR may be designed and deployed effectively for educational uses in classrooms and museums. Once the VRO is constructed, analysis of users of the VRO by psychologists and experts in human-computer interaction will be used to better understand the role of all the senses in a successful immersive experience, and to establish effective design parameters for immersive VR environments.

Metal is at the heart of archaeology: it permeated ancient societies, drew together far-flung regions, was central to economies, and opened unique avenues for self-expression. However, the scientific study of copper-alloy is currently fractured and cut off from the realities of modern archaeology in the UK. This programme has two important, related missions: to create new connections across the national heritage sector for archaeological chemistry, and at the same time, to reimagine what chemical analysis can reveal about our material past. It will deliver an ambitious analysis programme, tracing the nuanced flow and impact of metal around the Iron Age, Roman and Early Medieval world, from 50 BC to AD 1066. This will be delivered by new chemical and conceptual models, which move beyond provenance and object biographies. I will tackle the structural barriers that have stopped chemistry becoming an inclusive, standard tool across the heritage community. I will establish a national network of researchers and create real opportunities for lasting collaboration and debate, based around tiers of training, internships and workshops. This will form the first ever national programme for the analysis of first millennium AD British copper-alloy artefacts and address a number of current problems. My research has shown that the chemistry of a unit of metal is not static or solely determined by geology. Instead, it is a subtle and mutable record of the life history of the material. Previously overlooked shifts within the chemical record document human behaviour and technological processes. The data directly speaks to the concerns of the humanities and archaeology today. My new approach captures the flow, exchange, recycling, and human choices surrounding the use of metal in the past, as real people both shaped and were shaped by technology. The Portable Antiquities Scheme has recorded a staggering 330,000 copper alloy finds from the Iron Age, Roman, and Early Medieval periods, all reported by the general public. This achievement shows the power of citizen science and the true scale of the UK's metallurgical past, a new archive to complement the world-leading collections of Britain's museums and the huge volume of work by commercial archaeology units. This mountain of history urgently requires UK-wide attention, to improve the quality of analyses and to interpret regional and national trends. We will work with 30 partner organisations to produce 10,000 precise analyses of selected artefacts, across 100 themed case studies, in a dedicated laboratory at the University of Reading. Rather than focus on pockets of heritage, this will be a systematic investigation of all British regions, and the full array of material culture. The chemical analysis of artefacts is often expensive and marginalising for heritage managers. Several partners on this project have complained of being left to translate results with little training, or more worryingly, being ignored by specialists in laboratories. There is little trust or dialogue between sectors of the heritage community. Even material culture specialists do not know what chemistry can do for them, with few having the opportunity to find out. This programme will directly tackle these engrained problems through tiers of training and knowledge exchange events. In order to understand our material past, we have to fundamentally change the way we discuss it in the present. This programme will improve all the tools that we have available: the chemical data, UK coverage, archaeological connections, models, open access archives and publications. But more importantly it will bring together all voices within the heritage community and place science at the heart of our social debates. The opportunity offered by the undiscovered first millennium AD and the power of the Future Leaders Fellowships, provide the leverage to deliver lasting and crucial change to the British archaeological landscape.