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At 48,000 acres, the Mpala research center in Kenya is Princeton’s most important international venture and an important site of knowledge production in ecology and biology.
Yet there's a darker side to the center. By interviewing 20 Mpala researchers, visitors, administrators, and staff on multiple occasions over six months, and conducting archival research from University, Kenyan, and historical sources, The Daily Princetonian sought to examine the dynamics of what researchers, professors, and historians, Kenyan and American alike, have called a colonial space.
Researchers who spent time at Mpala describe unequal housing conditions, a culture of separation between Kenyan staff and largely international visitors, and financial inaccessibility for Kenyan students.
Mpala administrators and supporters point to the research center’s community engagement initiatives and the number of Kenyan administrators. They say that current administrators at both Mpala and the University have taken key steps to ease the divides of the center’s past.
“[Mpala] feels very much like those films depicting a time 100 years ago,” one researcher told the ‘Prince.’
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