Here, Professor Jolly offers a bit of the background to her award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In an age of citizen journalism, popular memoir and oral history communities, we enjoy an incredible variety of personal life writing. But for every life story circulated, there is the question of how it will be sustained and inherited. This of course is at the heart of the CH-BBC project, whose aim is to preserve, connect and celebrate the personal stories of BBC staff for future generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My essay in the special issue of a\/b: Auto\/Biography Studies,<\/em> \u2018Survival Writing: Autobiography versus Primatology in the Conservation Diaries of Alison Jolly<\/a>\u2019 offers an exploration of my mother Alison Jolly\u2019s work as a primatologist of ring-tailed lemurs. I propose that my mother chose autobiographical modes to unsettle anthropomorphic and western perspectives, and to enhance conservation efforts in Madagascar. I arranged publication of her diaries<\/a> posthumously, at her request and have found solace in this and in feminist cyborg scholar Donna Haraway\u2019s ideas which interlink all species\u2019 survival in the wake of the \u2018anthropocene<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The BBC\u2019s ongoing commitments to documenting wildlife\u2019s precarious and precious existence in the era when human activity threatens the very survival of the planet also brings comfort. Millions tuned in to watch David Attenborough\u2019s transporting series Seven Worlds One Planet<\/a> in 2019 and the flagship radio programme Costing the Earth offers \u2018fresh ideas from the sharpest minds working towards a cleaner, greener planet\u2019<\/a>. But Attenborough asks: \u201cThe question is, are we happy to suppose that our grandchildren may never be able to see an elephant except in a picture book?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Attenborough\u2019s warning is clear: inheritance is increasingly a collective challenge, but that makes it no less personal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Margaretta Jolly, June 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" JUNE 5, 2020 We\u2019re delighted to announce that Professor Margaretta Jolly, a co-investigator in the Connected Histories of the BBC project, has just been awarded the 2019 Hogan Prize. The prize is given to an \u2018outstanding essay\u2019 submitted to a…<\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/connected-histories-of-the-bbc\/files\/2022\/08\/Thank-You-Madagascar-cover.jpg\")