Carla Manfredi publishes new article on 19th century coral reef science

Thu. Aug. 6, 2026

Dr. Carla Manfredi has a new article in Global Nineteenth Century Studies on “‘Living Atolls: Fenua and Nineteenth-Century Coral Science”  (vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 55–71. 

Description: This paper situates the Royal of Society of London's expedition to the atoll of Funafuti at the end of the nineteenth century within the context of colonial reef science and suggests that the published report anticipated early

twentieth-century coral reef ecology. The paper connects the Funafuti Expedition with the British metaphor (especially prevalent in missionary discourse) of coral growth to evoke

the building of empire and argues that coral science simultaneously reflected and bolstered imperialist ideology. Beyond a concern at the intersection of science and colonial discourse, this paper closes by considering how an Indigenous Oceanic perspective (specifically the Indigenous Tuvaluan concept of fenua) redresses this anthropocentric colonial metaphor as well as scientific taxonomies, offering an alternative paradigm to conceive of atolls as living islands.