All project tasks were heavily impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even still, some success in achieving project goals through each of these work packages can be reported. During the first months of EPOSSCIGOV, significant progress was made in archival work in the UK National Archives. The fellow was able to digitally capture almost all of the necessary files in the Colonial Office series on British New Guinea and the New Guinea Protectorate, one of EPOSSCIGOV’s major cases. This work enabled the fellow to complete important sections of two original research articles, though the lockdowns resulting from COVID-19 resulted in the closure of this archive for most of the grant period. Furthermore, the fellow was also able to complete the first and shortest of the fellow’s planned trips to Australia to consult archival holdings in the National Library of Australia. Through the completion of this task, the fellow acquired copies of the diaries of important personnel who served as colonial officials in British New Guinea and successfully petitioning to open previously withheld records of New Guinea “Native Courts” that operated in the 1890s. However, because of surges in COVID, most copy services that the fellow engaged in Australia have been delayed. COVID rendered subsequent field work impossible.
COVID-19 lockdowns, suspension of travel funding by departments across the world, and subsequent stresses placed upon all researchers prevented virtually all of EPOSSCIGOV’s planned public engagement and dissemination activities during the grant period. However, when travel restrictions ease and funding for travel to conferences resumes sufficiently to allow participation, it is still the fellow’s intent to host these workshops (and to credit them to H2020 funding) in 2022 and 2023. Likewise, once enough progress has been made on archival research tasks allowing for the completion and publication of scholarly articles, work on dissemination outputs in the Conversation and on other named promotional platforms can be completed as well. Notwithstanding these obstacles and the impossibility of achieving most of the fieldwork needed to produce EPOSSCIGOV’s intended scholarly output and public disseminations, The fellow was able to draft the two original research articles that comprise the main scholarly output of EPOSSCIGOV during the action, one of which is under review, the other of which is awaiting additional archival material to complete fully for submission to the intended journal. Through these outputs and those exploiting the archival work started during the action, the project's results will be socialized to a wide audience of specialists working in imperial, legal, and colonial histories.
