How can conservation of biodiversity-rich landscapes come to terms with the past [Vergangenheitsbewältigung], given historical contexts of extreme social exclusion and marginalisation? How can key biodiversity areas whose global value rests on ahistorical ideas of Nature resist an uncritical presentism, to be better understood as entangled with diverse human histories and values? How can conservation policy and practice recognise deep cultural and linguistic differences around 'the nature of nature'? Our research responds to these questions through a cross-disciplinary humanities programme analysing dynamic dimensions of conservation territories in the Kunene Region of the former German colony that is now Namibia. Kunene's Etosha National Park and neighbouring beyond-Etosha conservation designations are home to diverse indigenous and marginalised peoples. Our research team of three women academics in Germany, the UK and Namibia has a combined 50+ years of ethnographic, archival, oral history and livelihoods enquiry in Etosha-Kunene. We propose a new collaborative three-year programme of six intersecting work packages (WPs): WP1 on 'Historicising Socio-ecological Policy in Etosha-Kunene' offers a detailed discourse analysis and history of public conservation policy affecting natures and peoples associated with the region, interrogating shifting influences, interests and governance technologies; WP2 on 'Comparative Indigenous Perspectives' assembles our long-term research in the region into a new comparative analysis of indigenous Khoe, San and Himba-Herero understandings of natures-beyond-the-human, drawing on current theories in the anthropology of nature; WP3 on 'Making Identity and Indigeneity in Etosha-Kunene' explores how indigenous identities are made, focusing especially on how distinct and intersecting 'Khoe' and 'San' identities have been present(ed) in ethnographic, linguistic, conservation and legal discourse; WP4 on 'Spatialising Coloniality in Etosha-Kunene' (re)traces the thought and practices of selected colonial European actors from the mid-1800s, bringing their written narratives into conversation with indigenous interlocutors inhabiting the same places and spaces (see WP2); WP5 on 'Collecting, Curating and Returning Etosha-Kunene Natures' investigates how the natures of Etosha-Kunene have been both represented and shaped by natural history collections of specimen-artefacts assembled by the (mostly male) European actors we study in WP4; WP6 focuses on public engagements, via a mobile exhibition, a website, and a series of workshops sharing and further exploring issues arising in WPs 1-5. In sum, we offer a multivocal and radically historicised analysis of Etosha-Kunene that contributes new thinking on coloniality, indigeneity and 'natural history'. Our aim is to support conservation laws and praxis to more fully recognise the diversity of pasts, cultures and natures constituting this internationally-valued region.

Aeolian (wind-blown) sand dunes occupy 10% of the Earth's surface, both in vast desert sand seas and as important natural defences against flooding along coasts. While the environmental conditions that influence the shape, movement and patterns of fully grown dunes have been extensively studied, arguably the most enduring deficiency in our understanding of these landforms is also the most profound: how do wind-blown dunes initiate? Initiation is central to understanding dunes as major geological units, including the response of these landscapes to climatic drivers, environmental change and societal impact. The significance of dune initiation for the wider understanding of wind-blown sandy systems and their contexts, for which the discovery of extra-terrestrial dune fields has added a recent impetus, ensures that the question of initiation has remained prominent throughout the history of desert research. Despite this, existing ideas proposed to explain processes of dune origin have remained largely descriptive and uncorroborated. The persistence of the question regarding dune initiation is not due to an absence of appreciation of its importance but, rather, a lack of the means to tackle this fundamental issue. The critical obstacle to a fully developed understanding of dune initiation is that, until now, measurement of the necessary variables, at the ultra-high spatial and temporal resolutions required to detect small-scale variations in surface conditions and wind-blown sand transport, has been impossible. Recent technological advances in the geosciences both inspire and underpin this proposal, as they now provide the opportunity to meet the demanding requirements of process measurement. Surmounting the abiding problem of dune initiation requires novel approaches in research design and our proposal tackles the issues of measurement at small scales by forging complementary links between fieldwork and physical modelling, as well as an ability to widen the application of detailed process findings through computer modelling. Specifically, this proposal will for the first time examine the key inter-relationships between airflow, surface properties, changes in sand transport and bedform shape that lie behind a meaningful understanding of how nascent dunes emerge. Full measurement of controlling processes and bedform development will be achieved through field monitoring of surface properties and bedform change at extremely high resolution. A key novelty of the fieldwork is that it will be carried out at three carefully chosen locations of known dune development, with each location representing the 'type site' for three different drivers of dune initiation; surface roughness, surface moisture and sand bed instability. The fieldwork will inform experiments undertaken in a bespoke laboratory flume that is designed to enable accurate characterisation of flow very close to the 3D surface of modelled dunes using state-of-the-art imaging techniques. Our field and laboratory dataset will be used to drive a computer model that we will then run to test the sensitivity of dune initiation and growth to different controls in a range of environmental conditions in deserts, coasts and on other planets. Our proposal is built on a new capability to make field observations at the requisite exceptional levels of detail, augmented by closely coupled state-of-the-art laboratory flow simulations, plus the development and application of evidence-based modelling to examine drivers of dune initiation. In concert, this approach represents an unprecedented opportunity to overcome a truly enduring plateau for understanding the origins of one of the major terrestrial landform systems.

The project stems from Transnationalizing Modern Languages (TML), one of three large grants awarded under the AHRC's Translating Cultures scheme. TML's established group of Modern Languages experts has conducted research revealing the centrality of a variety of language practices, ranging from multilingualism to translation, in migration contexts and multicultural societies. An important part of TML has been to develop methodologies aimed at embedding awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity within educational practices, from primary to higher and adult education. TML has cemented links with The Phoenix Project (http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/phoenix-project), led by Prof. Judith Hall, that links Cardiff University and the University of Namibia (UNAM) and which supports the Welsh Government's International Development Wales for Africa initiative, promoting mutual capacity building and sustainable collaboration. The aim of the project is to take the expertise and practical knowledge acquired within TML to Namibia by working closely with The Phoenix Project and its educational partnerships. Methodologies developed in TML will be adapted and refined to co-produce with researchers from UNAM and local practitioners materials tailor-made for the Namibian context. The new research seeks to facilitate educational and professional development through multilingual education in the local environment, identifying the school and health systems as key areas of social wellbeing and economic development. The promotion of multilingual education has been identified as a key target with social and economic benefits for Namibia with clear connections to a number of UN sustainable development goals. Issues relating to languages and communication affect the country's ability to grow economically; they are central to successful healthcare provision; they have a clear impact on poverty, income disparity and gender and generational inequality; they impact upon capacity building and access to job markets; they are relevant to conflict resolution as well as to the promotion of human rights; and they are clearly related to issues of cultural heritage and memory. The project concentrates on two specific areas: supporting multilingualism and translingual practices and their embedding in school education; and sensitizing health specialists to the role played by multilingual communication, including translation and self-translation, in their professional practice. In both cases, the focus is on co-research practices, mutual learning and capacity building. The aim is to achieve enduring impact through curriculum development, the production of teaching resources, and the creation of a transnational mentoring network that will amplify the effects of the project throughout the country and beyond. By promoting awareness of the impact of language capabilities and translation practices in Namibia's multilingual environment, the project aims to support sustainable action regarding cultural heritage and cultural memory (in education and the media), produce new research insights on the impact and sustainability of language and translation practices in a variety of locales and landscapes, and promote more efficient communication within health and medical practices (working with multilingual teams in multiple local contexts), all of which involve complex interactions among indigenous, colonial and post-colonial linguistic and cultural heritages. By engaging with creative practices of translation and language learning in Namibian schools and by building on an on-going project between Cardiff University's Phoenix Project and UNAM in health education, the project will make an enduring contribution to educational provision and access to healthcare for excluded sectors of the population as well as to the conservation of cultural memory and intangible heritage in Namibia through the validation of indigenous tongues as languages of education and information.