Conservation History, Science and Narratives in Madagascar (2025-2026)

Background

The conservation of endangered ecosystems is a fundamental challenge of our time. Intact habitats are essential for planetary resilience and health and support the livelihoods and cultures of diverse peoples globally. Yet, despite centuries of effort and billions of dollars, the biodiversity crisis is getting worse.

The biodiversity crisis is exacerbated in many formerly colonized nations, such as Madagascar, which is one of Earth’s biodiversity hotspots and poorest nations. In Madagascar, popular narratives suggest historical and ongoing actions by local peoples such as deforestation and hunting suffocate natural resources and push wildlife to the brink, requiring urgent intervention.

However, emerging and established scholarship offers a more nuanced history of Madagascar’s land. From this perspective, colonial narratives and practices laid the foundation stones of the modern biodiversity crisis. By pitting Malagasy people against Madagascar’s biodiversity, 19th-century scientists and naturalists justified colonial resource management, and with missionaries, created the need for Western intervention to “save” what nature remained. This enduring legacy arguably remains the predominant framework fueling conservation.

Decades of action rooted in colonial assumptions have proved untenable, in part, because they fail to address the extent and root causes of habitat change. Conservation success requires reconciling this history against modern practices.

Project Description

This project team will engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue about the history of environmentalism and conservation globally and in Madagascar with scientists, historians, writers and artists. Team members will trace the literature to determine who shaped enduring stories about biodiversity loss and their motivations and will work together to develop new guidelines for more inclusive conservation storytelling.

The project team will collect data through summer fieldwork in Madagascar. Team members will survey and observe lemurs, collect biological samples and document photographs and narratives from conservationists. Data collection will follow an interdisciplinary approach in both the forest to collect lemur data and villages to collect community-centric materials.

Subteams will engage in interdisciplinary projects that use data and materials from Madagascar to tell conservation stories. A weekly interdisciplinary seminar will allow students to link these projects to conservation history in pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial Madagascar. Sub-teams will use genetic data from lemurs to determine historical habitat connectivity; ecological data to ask how lemurs persist in degraded forests; and photographs and recorded narratives to document modern practices and perspectives.

Anticipated Outputs

Scientific publication in peer-reviewed journals; senior theses; conservation narratives presented as digital stories and hard-copy documentation for Madagascar community members; digital exhibit or academic publication

Student Opportunities

Ideally, this team will include 2-6 graduate students and 6-12 undergraduate students interested in arts, humanities, natural sciences, data and computation with a passion for environmental stewardship and storytelling. Rising seniors looking to develop distinction projects and graduate students looking to develop thesis or dissertation chapters are welcome to apply.

Applicants should be willing to consider and challenge long-held assumptions about the history of environmentalism and biodiversity conservation, particularly in Madagascar. Open-mindedness is foundational to this team’s ethos and characteristic of a successful team member.

As part of this project, students will engage in a weekly seminar and subteam work on interdisciplinary projects. In Fall 2025, the team will meet on Tuesdays from 3-5 p.m.

 

In the weekly seminar, project team members will use shared readings to trace the history of the environmental and conservation movements globally and specific to Madagascar. In the spring, the seminar will shift to proposing and refining inclusive conservation practices.

In subteams, project team members will gain skills in wildlife conservation through work in genetics and microbiomics, interpreting animal survey and behavioral data and curating photographs and stories from Malagasy students and conservationists.

This project has an optional summer component for selected students to travel to Madagascar. Exact dates are to be determined. Students will work at 1-2 field sites to collect data on wild lemurs and engage with Malagasy conservationists and academics. Students may also attend the International Primatological Society Conference in the Madagascar capital city of Antananarivo.

Timing

Summer 2025 – Spring 2026

• Summer 2025 (optional): Travel to Madagascar; collect lemur behavioral and survey data; collect lemur biological samples; document histories and photographs of conservationists; conduct lab work at the University of Antananarivo; engage in sharing sessions with Malagasy students; attend International Primatological Society conference
• Fall 2025: Engage in weekly seminar reading discussion; complete weekly subteam work, including data and material curation and digitization, PCR (genetic data amplification) and genetic sequencing, and statistical and bioinformatics analyses; visualize results through storyboarding and other methods
• Spring 2026: Conduct weekly seminar to develop new conservation guidelines; write and submit manuscripts and/or theses

Crediting

Academic credit available for fall and spring semesters; summer funding available

 

_{Students conducting fieldwork in Madagascar in 2017, courtesy of Charlie Nunn}