A UK-based taxpayer-funded study plans to research the connection between milk and colonialism, according to a report from DailyMail. The study is titled, “Milking it: colonialism, heritage & everyday engagement with dairy” and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Academics and experts from the History of Science Museum in Oxford plan to research the “political nature” of milk and its “colonial legacies.” According to experts involved in the study, milk is considered a “Northern European obsession” and is being imposed on other parts of the world.
Dr. Johanna Zetterstrom-Sharp, one of the researchers on the project, said that making milk an important part of a diet “may be understood as a white supremacist” assumption. She noted that many non-European diets have high levels of lactose intolerance, leading researchers to believe that milk may not be adequate for the diet of all people.
Zetterstrom-Sharp is an associate professor at the Institute of Archaeology and will conduct the project alongside Dr. JC Niala, head of research at the History of Science Museum.
Zetterstrom-Sharp appears to have a fondness for the subject as she reportedly took part in a talk titled “Milk and Whiteness” during an exhibition on milk in 2022. The exhibition focused on the alleged manner in which colonial powers imposed dairy economies on regions where populations have high levels of lactose intolerance.
“By focusing on communities intersecting industry, aid, and government regulation, the project aims to center on heritage as a vital framework for understanding how colonial legacies influence contemporary issues and affect people’s lives,” the museum said in a statement.
“The project will question both the imagined and real aspects of milk, revealing the intimate and political nature of this everyday substance,” the museum statement continued.
It is unclear at the time how much money the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy allocated to the milk project via the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
