Acknowledgements

Funders

The Gwillim Project is supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

The Gwillim Project is supported in part by funding from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute.

The Gwillim Project also wishes to thank our official SICI collaborator, IIT Madras.

Formal Partnerships


The Gwillim Project is founded in a partnership between collecting institutions and
academic research centres.

• The Blacker Wood Natural History Collection (BWC) in the McGill Library was founded by Casey Wood, a medical doctor trained at McGill, and is one of the richest natural history collections in North America with over 18,000 bound volumes, and approximately 10,000 individual pieces of artwork; the collection covers every branch of natural history, with a particular focus on ornithology and vertebrate zoology.

• The McGill Library is a key partner, providing support for the project through Digitization Initiatives, copyright research, and the public program activities of ROAAr (Rare and Special Collections, Osler, Art and Architecture).

• The Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC) at McGill is a research initiative and resource base established to promote the study of the history, economy, and cultures of the lands and peoples of the Indian Ocean world (IOW) – from China to Southeast and South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. The IOWC’s current research focuses on the theme of human-environment interaction.

• Founded in 2010, the South Asian Decorative Arts and Crafts Collection (SADACC) Trust in Norwich is a non-profit organization whose mission is to record, conserve and promote the arts, crafts and cultures of South Asia. The Trust holds the South Asia Collection including the Madras Album and other works by European and Indian artists.

• The Aga Khan Museum (AKM) in Toronto is part of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), with an active program of education, research, and collaboration, to foster dialogue and promote tolerance and mutual understanding among people.

• The Centre for World Environmental History founded in 2002 at the University of Sussex (CWEH) has previously worked with McGill’s Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC), examining climate change and disruption in the Indian Ocean. This project forms part of the Global Transformations research theme at the university, and particularly supports research into South Asian Records of Climate Change.

• DakshinaChitra is an exciting cross cultural living museum of art, architecture, lifestyles, crafts and performing arts of South India. The main mission is to exhibit, promote and preserve aspects of the broader, more inclusive cultures of the states and to bring these arts to the public in a participative, enjoyable and engaging way.

• Making research visible is an important aspect of this project and the partnership with McGill-Queens University Press (MQUP), an internationally renowned publisher of scholarly research, will facilitate this aspect.

Project Team

This multidisciplinary project brings together an international collaboration of researchers with museum curators and specialist librarians and archivists. The Research Group includes scholars from diverse fields in Canada, India, the UK and the US. See The Network page for more on the members of our research group.

Core Team:

• Applicant/PI: Dr Victoria Dickenson, Professor of Practice, McGill University Library and Collections

• Co-Applicant: Dr Gwyn Campbell, Canada Research Chair in Indian Ocean World History, McGill University and the founding Director of the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC) at McGill

• Co-applicant: Lauren Williams, Blacker Wood Collection (BWC) Librarian, McGill University Library

• Collaborator: Dr Vinita Damodaran, Professor of South Asian History, University of Sussex and Director, Centre for World Environmental History

• Collaborator (Shastri, DMC): Deborah Thiagarajan, Founder and director, DakshinaChitra Museum

 • Co-applicant (Shastri): John Bosco Lourdusamy, Associate Professor, History of Science, IIT Madras

• Collaborator: Dr Marika Sardar, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto.

• Collaborator: Dr Ben Cartwright, Collection Curator, The SADACC Trust, UK

• Project Research Associate: Dr Anna Winterbottom, Research Associate in the Indian Ocean World Centre (IOWC) at McGill

• Partner: Dr Jonathan Crago, Editor-in-Chief, McGill Queens University Press