Milking It: colonialism, heritage and everyday engagement with dairy

This research project is being undertaken in collaboration with JC Niala, Head of Research, Teaching and Collections at the History of Science Museum, Oxford. It seeks to understand how northern European cultural and historical relationships with milk have framed global policies and regulation of dairy, with a focus on Kenya and the UK.

According to UCL Project Lead, Johanna Zetterstrom Sharp:

“We can all relate to milk in some way, it is our first food, and whether or not we like milk, it’s something we encounter every day. Yet when you scratch under the surface, milk is surprisingly political. I am interested in the systems that were developed in a post-colonial world, in a highly charged moral landscape, where the intention was to improve the lives of those coming out of a challenging historical period. Milk provides a powerful case study as it allows us to unpack the assumptions that shaped these plans. It enables us to understand the extent to which planners and policy makers understood or recognised the knowledge and the work that was already being done by people affected by colonialism, to deal with its widespread impacts, on their own terms.” 

The project team is also interested in finding out how non-industrial dairy culture and heritage survives in the face of dominant and high-intensity dairy industries.

There are many different historical links between dairy industries in the UK and Kenya, colonialism being a primary one given that many British settlers in Kenya established dairy farms.

The project team will explore this through three research themes in milk heritage: climate change, sustainable and unsustainable development, heritage and health.

Central to the project is developing a community-led research methodology using podcast making and diary based practices. This will include working with a producer to make a high-quality 5-episode podcast series together. The team will be working with up to 12 community researchers, 6 in the UK and 6 in Kenya.

Further details

• Milking It website

Image: Black and white photograph of a calf on an aeroplane traveling from the UK to Kenya, 1952. Credit: Museum of English Rural Life, Reading