This talk will present findings from the interdisciplinary Curating Crises project, which examined the hidden histories of volcano science in the English-speaking Caribbean over the course of the twentieth century. Episodes of volcanic unrest are unique moments in which different forms of knowledge – scientific, experiential, ‘local’ – are brought into the high-stakes environment of crisis management and decision-making. This talk will explore the colonial dynamics of these processes, focusing on volcanic crises in Montserrat in the 1930s and 1990s. It will explore the knowledge networks and hierarchies that shaped governmental responses, and argue that some of the deficiencies in the early response to the 1990s crisis can be explained by events in the 1930s. The case will therefore be made for a long-term perspective on hazard response, and for interdisciplinary approaches to unearthing historical lessons for the present.

Martin Mahony is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of East Anglia. His work addresses the geographies of science and technology and the relationships between knowledge, politics and power.

David Pyle is Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford. His research involves reconstructing both eruptive processes and the effects of volcanism on communities who live on or around volcanoes. David has convened a number of public exhibitions on historical volcanism and is the author of Volcanoes: Encounters through the Ages.