Remaking Britain: South Asian Connections and Networks, 1830s to the present

'Remaking Britain' is concerned with how archival records and oral histories reveal the significance of South Asian people and communities as agents of change to Britain's cultural, economic, political and social life from the period of empire in the 1830s to the present. It will open up, generate and re-present the archive of South Asian Britain for public audiences, community groups and academics. By exposing the little-known impact and legacies of South Asians in Britain, the project will make key interventions into historical, cultural and literary inquiry, revealing the complex, textured production of Britain's cultural-political identities.

Centrally, the project will explore how South Asian networks and connections across the UK have been and can be documented, remembered and narrated, and will link archival resources, oral histories and research findings in a publicly accessible database. In partnership with the British Library, it will create a free interactive research resource with interconnected entries on people, organisations, events and locations to visualise the embedded presence of South Asians in the UK. Among others, a key focus will be on underrepresented communities such as workers (e.g. seamen, pedlars, domestic workers, textile workers & today's 'key workers') and the literary and more broadly creative arts (e.g. writers, editors & theatre practitioners) to trace networks and their societal and cultural impact.

The project extends the work of previous AHRC funded projects 'Making Britain: Visions of Home and Abroad (1870-1950)' and 'Beyond the Frame: Indian-British Connections', led by Susheila Nasta (OU/QMUL), which laid important foundations to ongoing research in this field. Central to the original projects was a database launched in 2010. Given technological innovations, and increased archival digitisation efforts, this project will significantly expand the research to create a newly conceived digital resource that will bring this multi-faceted history to life. Absorbing the old database, it will substantially rework and expand its content, extending it back to 1830 and up to the present, incorporating new archival findings as well as new oral history interviews with the generation who lived through decolonisation and partition. New digital humanities tools and techniques will be used to draw out previously unrecorded networks among South Asians in Britain, connecting them to other racialised minorities and the white majority. The c.750 planned entries will be complemented by sound files, images and digitised archival materials, as well as learning resources for schoolchildren, educators and adult learners. The design and functionality of this database will be generated in collaboration with the public through user experience workshops.

The project is positioned at the intersection of the digital humanities, history and literary studies. By focusing on networks (among individuals, across groups and geographical space) and by taking a long historical perspective, it will intervene in and extend current debates about migration, diaspora and belonging. By highlighting the complexities of Britain's lesser-known long intersecting migration histories, it will complicate knowledge of South Asian settlement in Britain. In its excavation and analysis of archival material and oral histories, the project will extend scholarship that seeks to develop a decolonial archival praxis and contribute to conversations about decolonising the arts, heritage and culture sectors. In collaboration with the British Library, it will provide key tools for teachers and schoolchildren, as well as members of the public, to understand and explore British history and contemporary culture as inclusive of and shaped by its South Asian inhabitants, citizens and communities. Crucially, the project will deepen and complicate contemporary public debates on belonging and home, and help to remake ideas of Britain and Britishness.