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'Fault Lines', a new exhibition at MAA, offers an intimate exploration of Pacific cultures guided by Indigenous curators and contemporary artists from Hawai‘i, the Torres Strait, Bougainville and the Salish Sea

Hundreds of objects which tell the story of 100 million of India’s most marginalised citizens – its Indigenous and Adivasi people – are to go on display for the first time in a ground-breaking exhibition at Cambridge ̽»¨Ö±²¥â€™s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) from today.

As Europe expanded its overseas colonies, fixed ideas of racial differences took hold. Historian Dr Mélanie Lamotte, whose forebears include a slave, is researching a brief period when European notions of ethnicity were relatively fluid.  Early French settlers believed that non-white inhabitants of the colonies could be ‘civilised’ and ‘improved’.

Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá (Department of Spanish & Portuguese) discusses the life and times of Anthony Knivet, a young soldier from Norfolk who spent nine years living in Brazil in the 16th century. She will be discussing Knivet's life on as part of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas. 

As they struggled to maintain their grip on India as the jewel in the colonial crown, the British attempted to mould the character of India’s princes. Research by Teresa Segura-Garcia into the remarkable story of Sayaji Rao III, Maharaja of Baroda, reveals the thinking behind his education and its practical implications. She presents her work in a tomorrow (1 June 2016).

This week, millions of Muslims make the annual pilgrimage to Mecca known as the Hajj. A new study reveals how, in the age of Empire, the spiritual journey became a major feature of British imperial culture, attracting the interest of Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill and others – and resulting in one of the earliest Thomas Cook package tours.

New research on the treatment of 'hardcore' female Mau Mau prisoners by the British in the late 1950s sheds new light on how ideas about gender, deviancy and mental health shaped colonial practices of punishment.

Allegations of torture by government officials are emerging daily from countries caught up in the struggle for democracy. Derek Elliott, a researcher in Cambridge's Faculty of History, is looking at governmental torture and violence in colonial India and has uncovered surprising links with modern states.