“To those who knew him best because they loved him most”: Loss, Grief, and Family in British Antarctic exploration, c. 1901-1922

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• Deb Wood, PhD candidate, Scott Polar Research Institute
• Thursday 12 March 2026, 14:00-15:00
• Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Deb Wood.

This thesis provides an analysis of the emotional experiences of the families bereaved in the course of early 20th Century British Antarctic expeditions to expand and complicate discussions surrounding separation, loss, and relationships across distances. By piecing together and tracing the lived experiences of the twelve families who lost loved ones on expeditions between 1901-1922, this work illuminates these stories of familial separation, care, loss, and protection, and to reincorporate them into our narratives surrounding Antarctica’s histories. In bringing the lens of emotion to these narratives of heroized exploration and tragedy, it demonstrates the fundamental role that emotions played within these expeditions from their beginnings, and shed light on the continuous, deliberate, and reciprocated emotional relationships that stood at the core of the experience of Antarctic exploration – both for the men who physically travelled to Antarctica, and those who advocated, cared, and watched for them in their absence. By tracing these emotional connections and relationships throughout the expedition’s duration, the immediate aftermath of loss, and the long-term reality of losing a loved one in these circumstances, this thesis offers a fresh perspective on what it was to grieve at a distance, as well as the vital role that the grieving process of individuals, networks, and institutions alike played in the development of the Antarctic canon and the expeditions’ public legacies. In this way, it places these families and their emotional relationships back into the expedition narratives, and highlight just how crucial their emotional labour was to the expedition, its members, and its future legacies.

This talk is part of the Scott Polar Research Institute - Polar Humanities and Social Sciences ECR Workshop series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• Department of Geography
• Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details
• Scott Polar Research Institute - Polar Humanities and Social Sciences ECR Workshop

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