*Archives of the Disappeared* is an interdisciplinary initiative that addresses the challenges of researching communities, social movements, spaces, literatures and lifeworlds that have been suppressed or annihilated through acts of colonial, economic, and state violence. Working within disciplinary practices (history, social anthropology, literature, and sociology) that rely on material and empirical research, where finding ‘evidence’ forms a core methodological objective, this initiative addresses the absence of evidence as a result of colonial, national, elite, and state
denial and suppression and responses to such structures by those targeted for erasure. This initiative will launch with an initial focus on the Middle East and South Asia. It will research innovative forms of documentation by survivors and descendants of disappeared communities and cultures, develop new theoretical frameworks and methodologies for archival and field work in the absence of archives, and build a network of historians, archivists, organisers, and artists across the region whose work offers a challenge to disciplinary practices.
For more details, please contact:
Yael Navaro, Reader in the Anthropology of Politics, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Newnham College yn213@cam.ac.uk
Chana Morgenstern, Lecturer in Postcolonial and Middle Eastern Literatures, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Newnham College cm894@cam.ac.uk