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 studies 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.
Past events can be found here.
For more details, and to be added to the mailing list, please contact:
Mezna Qato, Margaret Anstee Fellow, Newnham College, Affiliated Lecturer, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge mq212@cam.ac.uk
Yael Navaro, Professor, Department of Social Anthropology and Fellow of Newnham College, University of Cambridge yn213@cam.ac.uk
Chana Morgenstern, Lecturer, Faculty of English and Fellow of Newnham College, University of Cambridge cm894@cam.ac.uk
Mahvish Ahmed, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics, m.ahmad14@lse.ac.uk