Zoological Human Categorisation: Behavioural research in the context of decolonisation and scientific discipline formation

The project focuses on one of the most productive field sites of wildlife research during the 1960s and 1970s, the Serengeti Research Institute in post-colonial Tanzania. It analyses how the scientific study of the national park’s animal species through ethologists and ecologists was interrelated with the postcolonial renegotiation of social relationships within the Institute as well as around the Serengeti National Park and in Tanzania. In particular, the project examines the practice of wildlife research and its transformation into scientific publications as well as into popularizing books and films; it traces the postcolonial "Africanisation" of the Institute and its impact upon social relations and scientific practices at the Institute, and it is interested in how far the institute's production of scientific knowledge legitimized the spatial and social politics of the National Park.