Generation independence: a people's history

Lead Research Organisation: University of Portsmouth
Department Name: Sch of Area Stud, Hist, Politics & Lit

Abstract

How do you make space in public history for a period which is historically important, but not institutionally valued? How do you transmit stories about the past between generations who have been educated in different languages of instruction? These were two key questions which emerged from an AHRC Early Career Fellowship on 'Rewriting the veteran: gender, geography, generation and the Algerian War'. In this previous project, the Principal Investigator (Natalya Vince) wrote about the difficulties of writing post-independence history and analysed intergenerational (non-)transmission. She critiqued the squashing down of Algerian history in academic and popular history into two juxtaposed periods - the War of Independence (1954-62) and the civil conflict of the 1990s - as feeding into a caricature of Algeria as locked in an inescapable cycle of violence. She analysed how younger generations of Algerians understood the wartime and post-war roles of women, revealing the ways in which young people reimagined women who were often socially unconventional as more conservative figures, using a dominant language of sacrifice, martyrdom and religious piety. This Follow on Funding project provides an opportunity to go beyond analysis. It will develop and test out creative solutions to these issues, which are societal risks even more than they are academic challenges. It thus significantly enhances the value and wider benefit of the original research project.

The project will produce 18 new 20-minute documentary portraits in which Algerian women and men talk about the 1960s and 1970s. This was a key period in Algerian history: after eight years of a devastating anti-colonial war and 132 years of colonial rule, the emphasis was on rebuilding Algerian infrastructure, tackling massive illiteracy, freeing the Algerian economy, society and culture from (neo-)colonial domination and positioning Algeria as a world leader amongst newly liberated nations. The documentaries seek to convey this story on a human scale, going beyond the usual handful of iconic political figures. The intersections of ordinary lives with processes of state- and nation-building will emerge through interviews with teachers, doctors, air traffic controllers and power plant managers, amongst others.

Documentaries will be edited, subtitled in Arabic, French and English, uploaded onto a specially-created project website, and connected into social media. Intergenerational exchange is embedded in the production process as well as generated through the outputs: the PI will be working with an Algeria-based film company funded via a scheme to support unemployed youth, and two young Algerian artists will produce artwork to express the stories told in new creative forms, further engaging new audiences. Subtitling the films and using Facebook autotranslation features for posts and comments will enable those who are more Arabophone and those who are more Francophone to exchange views and testimony around the same artefact, bridging a linguistic divide which is hyperpoliticised, but in everyday life can be as much a practical barrier as anything else. Audience feedback on a first round of films will shape who is interviewed in the next round and the themes to be addressed, reinforcing the co-production of knowledge and shared ownership of the project.

By the end of the award, the project will have produced a substantial body of original, creative, open-access material and aims to have generated a cross-generational online conversation amongst new audiences about the 1960s and 1970s. This will serve as a springboard to engage with more 'top down' outlets for public history (print press, TV, radio, art galleries, museums) to encourage them to integrate this period into their activities. If successful, this model of how to bring new chronologies and stories into public history 'from below' has the potential to be applied to a wide range of contexts and chronological periods.

Planned Impact

This project trials a new model for engaging with new audiences. Concrete, feasible, measurable goals to be achieved within the lifespan of the funded project aim to create the basis for wider ranging and more ambitious, difficult-to-achieve impacts beyond the end of the award.

Those who will immediately benefit from the project are the interviewees who participate in the documentaries. They will have the opportunity to make a contribution to the history of Algeria in their own words, ensuring that their stories are not lost at a point in time when their generation is beginning to die out. Oral history interviews carried out by the PI as part of the original research have demonstrated that telling one's story to a researcher can enable interviewees to realise the value of what they have to say, prompting them to write their memoirs, or talk to their family about their life story. Also amongst the immediate beneficiaries are the young Algerian filmmakers and artists who will contribute to producing the documentaries and the associated website and artwork. They will have the opportunity to directly engage with a period in history to which they have been little exposed and shape how it is presented to the wider public, as well as bring their work to the attention of an international audience.

Once the website and associated social media are up and running, the main beneficiaries are the target users. The primary audience will consist of: (a) other Algerians of the 1960s and 1970s generation, who will be able to share their memories via the project website and its Facebook page (b) Younger generations of Algerians who will have resources to learn about a period in history which is not taught in schools, present in museums or much discussed in the media. All users will be encouraged to give feedback about what they would like to learn more about, enabling them to actively shape and have a stake in how the project develops. The professionally subtitled films and autotranslate features embedded in social media will facilitate community engagement in Arabic, French and English.

The secondary audience will consist of international audiences in the French/English/Arabic-speaking worlds (including their diasporas). The model of the documentaries, website, artwork and associated social media which will emerge from this project has the potential to be replicated in a wide range of places and chronological periods. It will be of particular interest to users elsewhere in the world who face similar issues to those in Algeria (absence of post-independence history in public space, closed archives) and who could adapt the model to new contexts.

By generating an online discussion around a specific documentary project, the broader aim beyond the life of the award is to start a wider conversation within Algeria about post-independence history and intergenerational transmission. Institutional priorities and ways of doing things are always slow to change, but the long-term goal would be that post-independence, 'ordinary' histories find their place within Algerian museums, school textbooks, art galleries and the mainstream media as a result of demonstrating 'bottom up' interest in this period. As a stepping stone to this, the fact that the videos will be of broadcast quality and available via a Creative Commons licence will facilitate their reuse by journalists on the radio and in documentaries and reports. The artwork also has the potential to be easily repackaged by a curator as a gallery exhibition, with the videos integrated via viewing posts or QR codes. Making space for stories which foreground agency, construction, negotiation and hope in the future provides an important counterbalance to stories of violent confrontation between mutually exclusive groups which have for too long dominated how Algerian history, and Algerian society, have been seen and understood from both 'inside' and 'outside'.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Title Making and breaking the news 
Description 18:32 documentary, subtitled in Arabic, English and French One of Youcef Ferhi's earliest childhood memories is of his mother, who unusually for the time could read and write, reading the newspaper Alger Républicain to his father, who was illiterate. Upon independence in 1962, Youcef returned to Algeria from Tunisia, where he had been working in a National Liberation Front (FLN) rehabilitation centre for injured soldiers. He tells the story of how with limited means, a handful of people and accelerated training, the Algerian press began to emerge. President Ben Bella had told the press that their role was to "say everything and comment on everything". Journalists quickly understood that this was not, in fact, the case. Youcef's story explores the role of the press in a new and increasingly authoritarian state, in which journalists had a very direct, often tempestuous, relationship with the most senior politicians. The limits of what could and could not be said were constantly tested. Along the way, we meet Presidents Ben Bella, Boumediene and Bouteflika, author Kateb Yassine, artist M'hamed Issiakhem and one Algeria's first female journalists, Zhor Zerari. 
Type Of Art Artistic/Creative Exhibition 
Year Produced 2020 
Impact 366 views on Youtube 
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajWSfFItE54&t=1s
 
Title The chemistry of national construction 
Description 24:04 min documentary subtitled in Arabic, English and French Rachid Sidi Boumedine was born in the working-class neighbourhood of Clos Salambier (El Madania). Despite the many obstacles preventing "indigenous" children - and notably those from poor urban and rural backgrounds - pursuing their studies, Rachid made it to high school. After participating in the student strike of 19 May 1956, his greatest desire was to join the rural guerrilla of the National Liberation Front (FLN). In the end, he went to France where he worked in a factory, was an activist in the FLN French Federation and studied chemistry. Returning to Algeria in 1963, the shortage of educated personnel meant that Rachid could have done any number of jobs. As a member of the National Union of Algerian Students (UNEA), he briefly left Algeria after Boumediene's coup in June 1965, before returning to run a gas-producing factory in Constantine. His story reveals how tiny minority of young, university-educated Algerians who were put in charge of vital infrastructure worked with older, illiterate workers to keep core infrastructure going, in a context of material shortages and competing economic and political interests. 
Type Of Art Artistic/Creative Exhibition 
Year Produced 2021 
Impact Screened at the international conference, the Coloniality of Infrastructure Jan 2021: https://colonialityofinfrastructure.com/ 
URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5O0mhEm-4c&t=5s
 
Title The lands of my father 
Description 20 minute documentary portrait, in French, subtitled in Arabic, English and French. Summary: In 1969, Ouardia Belanteur was one of the very first Algerian women to study in the USSR, as part of programme of Algerian-Soviet educational cooperation. From a poor rural background, she and her sisters were the first in their family to receive formal schooling. Ouardia had nevertheless always been fascinated by the USSR, not least because her father was a railway worker with ties to the Algerian Communist Party. After an intensive year of Russian language study in Kiev, she studied geochemistry in Leningrad. In 1973, she was also part of Algerian delegations to the Tunis Pan-African Youth Festival and the Berlin International Youth Festival. Ouardia's story reveals the ease with which young, educated Algeria women and men were able to move between university courses and employment in the 1960s, but also women's negotiations within their own families to continue their education and travel and the frictions between more left-wing students and the more socially and politically conservative Algerian state. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2020 
Impact 2,045 views as of 10/3/20. 24,101 people reached on Facebook, 3,542 engagements with 443 reactions, comments and shares (as of 10/3/20) The video has promoted multilingual discussion on Facebook about the place of women in independent Algeria and their role in Algerian history. Update 5/3/21: 5,747 views on Youtube (as of 5 March 2020) 
URL http://generation-independence.com/the-lands-of-my-father.html
 
Title The long history of a short-lived statue 
Description 20-minute documentary portrait, incorporating personal archive images. In French, subtitled in English, French and Arabic. In 1968, fresh from participating in student revolts in Paris, Ahmed Benyahia attended the inauguration of a statute of the Emir Abdelkader in the centre of Algiers. He was not impressed. The proportions appeared all wrong, with the horse of this nineteenth-century hero of the Algerian resistance looking more like a donkey. Determined to do better, Ahmed returned to his home town of Constantine and tried to interest the regional and local authorities in funding the building of a statue of a hero of the War of Liberation, Youcef Zighoud (1921-56). The statue would become an object of controversy between the local authorities in Zighoud's village of birth, the regional headquarters of the party of the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Constantine and the presidential office in Algiers. Ahmed tells a story of the struggle to come to an officially-agreed version of the past, with arguments about ownership, legitimacy and regional balance resulting in the statue of Zighoud being more often hidden from view than on public display. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact 1000 views on Youtube. 10,894 people reached on Youtube, 1,030 engagements, inc 859 reactions, comments and shares (as of 6/3/20). The documentary was the central focus in a chapter by anthropologist Susan Slyomovics in a book on 'Postcolonialism in a New Key: Concepts - Methodologies - Scholarly Activisms', edited by David D Kim (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). The chapter was entitled 'On Wings of the Gallic Cockerel: Ahmed Benyahia and the Provenance of an Algerian Public Sculpture' Update 5/3/21: 1,493 views on Youtube 
URL http://generation-independence.com/the-long-history.html
 
Title The place of stories from home 
Description 20 minute documentary portrait in Arabic, subtitled in French, English and Arabic, incorporating personal archive photos. Summary: In the late 1950s, Aida Bamia was a Palestinian teenage refugee, living in Egypt and collecting donations for the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). Just over a decade later, in the early 1970s, she was travelling around the east of Algeria collecting popular poetry and documenting family and community traditions as a lecturer in the Department of Arabic Literature at the University of Constantine. Plunged into the post-independence cultural politics of Algeria and faced with the aspirations of illiterate parents who sent their children to university to study things that they did not already know, Aida discusses the challenges she faced in setting up a module on popular literature. 'Folklore' occupied an ambiguous position: it was both dismissed as a relic of the past and presented as an essential element in constructing an 'authentic' Algerian identity for the future. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact 884 views on Youtube; 52,977 people reached on Facebook, 3,440 engagements inc. 338 reactions, comments and shares (as of 6/3/20). The video promoted discussion amongst contemporary Algerian and Palestinian writers, and a number of Algerian writers discussed online seeking out some of Aida Bamia's works on translation and popular poetry/ folklore as a result. Update 5/3/21: 1,131 views on Youtube. 
URL http://generation-independence.com/the-place-of-stories.html
 
Title The sovereignty of the skies 
Description 20 minute documentary portrait, in French, subtitled in Arabic, English and French. Summary: In 1962, just at the moment of independence, Mohamed Benammour returned to Algeria from his studies in France. From a modest rural background, Mohamed was the first Algerian to obtain a degree in aeronautical engineering. He was rapidly promoted to a senior position of responsibility within Algerian civil aviation, which nevertheless remained largely under French control. What was happening in civil aviation in the 1960s and early 1970s was a snapshot of what was happening across Algeria in this period. Algeria was seeking to give substance to its political independence by ending its economic and technical dependency on France and the West. It was also seeking to position itself as a leader of liberation movements on the world stage. Mohamed tells the story of his role in bringing Algerian aviation into Algerian hands, as well as the challenges of managing the many hijacked aeroplanes which arrived in Algiers during this period, as members of the PLO and the Black Panthers sought to land in 'the Mecca of Revolution'. 
Type Of Art Film/Video/Animation 
Year Produced 2019 
Impact 466 views on Youtube. 13,846 people reached on Facebook, 1,420 engagements with 1,174 reactions, comments and shares (as of 6/3/20) Update 5.3.21: 592 views on Youtube 
URL http://generation-independence.com/the-sovereignty-of.html
 
Description The project has so far produced seven documentary shorts (20 minutes each), all subtitled in English, Arabic and French. Each film is an interview with an 'ordinary' Algerian (or in one case, a Palestinian woman) talking about the 1960s and 1970s in Algeria, interwoven with personal photographs. Through this, the audience can explore how individual life stories intersected with grand narratives of state- and nation-building, power struggles at the top of the Algerian state, neo-colonialism and Third Worldism - as well as processes of social change such as increasing access to education, urbanisation and shifts in the roles and rights accorded to women. The documentaries challenge dominant ways of talking about post-independence Algeria, which tend to be either unquestionably glorifying or reproduce narratives of post-war disappointment. They demonstrate how the belief that new things could be done every day, practical problems, meteoric social mobility and an authoritarian but not monolithic political system were all intertwined. They reveal the messiness of everyday experience in a world of new opportunities, fresh obstacles and old ways of doing things. Films 1-4 are on the project website, films 5-7 will be uploaded shortly. We will continue to work on the project to reach the target number of 18 documentaries (progress was slowed by the series of popular protests which began in Algeria in February 2019).

In addition, we have been working with young Algerian artists to produce artistic responses to each of the videos. The aim is to creatively demonstrate the multiplicity of perspectives and interpretations. We originally planned to work with two artists (Amine Dahmane and Hicham Gaoua), but were able to use some of the funding to recruit Cultural Management and Communication Consultant Toufik Douib - who has already curated a number of high profile exhibitions of Algerian art in the UK, Algeria and Spain. Toufik in turn helped us to recruit a third artist to the project, Louise Dib. This also ensured a better gender balance. One of the interesting findings to emerge from this collaboration is, in the absence of a public history of this period, just how challenging it is to go beyond dominant modes of representation (glorifying/disappointment), and part of the artists' approach was to ask many questions about the history of the period. This seems to underline the potential significance of this project. The artists have produced a number of works, ranging from pop art, to typography to mixed media works (photographs/cartoons). They will form an online exhibition, curated by Toufik Douib.

The project website exists in English, French and Arabic. As a result of feedback, we are working on providing a glossary and additional information (a mixture of original content and bringing together sources already available online). The project website is connected to the Youtube channel Generation Independence. We are primarily engaging with our audience - and in doing do identifying new interviewees/documentary subjects - through Facebook. Our Facebook page @generation-independence is also trilingual and as of 10/3/20 had 1,540 page likes and an average post reach of 39,200 people.
Exploitation Route The project seeks to provide a model for academics, educators and those working in the heritage sector of how to engage new audiences in producing cross-generational, multilingual, multimedia histories outside of traditional institutional pathways. We want to see if this model can create a groundswell of popular interest in a period of history which has largely been ignored, which in turn might capture the interest of museum directors, school curriculum decision-makers and traditional media. It is too soon to say whether this has been achieved, but we are working towards this through the pathways described under 'Narrative impact'.

Beyond the model for new ways to do public history - which is our primary goal - this project has also produced a new archival source for academics and teachers. This resource is entirely trilingual, making it accessible across the English-, French- and Arabic-speaking worlds. It is particularly valuable as the archives for this period in Algerian history are currently closed, and there are very few published histories. One of the documentaries (The Long History of a Short-Lived Statue) has already been the subject of a forthcoming chapter by anthropologist Susan Slyomovics in Postcolonialism in A New Key: Concepts - Methodologies - Scholarly Activisms, ed. David D. Kim. (New York: Palgrave/MacMillan).
Sectors Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
URL http://generation-independence.com/
 
Description 1) The documentary shorts are already being taken forward by the three young/ up-and-coming artists associated with this project, to produce artwork engaging with the key themes of the interviews. This will be the basis of an online exhibition. Working with exhibition spaces and curators, we plan in the future to apply for funding for a physical exhibition of the project which will engage further new audiences. For the artists, this is contributing to raising their profiles, and notably increasing their international visibility. 2) In addition to publicising the model of the project as a whole [outlined in 'Key Findings'], we have also been encouraging take-up of its content by teachers and lecturers in higher and secondary education, as an accessible source which is easy to integrate into teaching programmes. This has included presenting the documentary series at a German/Lebanese workshop at the American University of Beirut on narrative, authority and circulation, the Maison française in Oxford, the RUDN (People's Friendship University of Russia) as well as forthcoming roundtables/screenings at the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland. 3) One of the key findings was the need for a more granular understanding of how online audiences engage with public history projects, and the extent to which this might be context-specific, in order to better target the offer. We have had wide ranging, multilingual engagement with the videos. We plan to analyse this more fully in the months to come, notably to better understand how factors such as the primary (spoken) language of the video and the gender of the interviewee might shape how the wider public engages. We also plan to use Facebook Insights to deepen understanding of who our audience is (age/sex/geographical location), and how this might change depending on the video subject. This will be the subject of a publication which we will disseminate to stakeholders in the heritage sector. This will contribute to knowledge about how to better achieve impact, whilst at the same time provide a data-led analysis of the challenges of public biases/ pre-conceptions about the kinds of history they want to engage in.
First Year Of Impact 2019
Sector Education,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections
Impact Types Cultural,Societal
 
Description Development of a transnational seminar series on a global history of the 1980 in and seen from the global south 
Organisation Forum Transregionale Studien
Department EUME
Country Germany 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution I was selected - after international competition - to present the Generation Independence documentary series (and broader project) at a two-week long Transregional Academy on 'Fragment-Power-Public: Narrative, Authority and Circulation in Archival Work' within the framework of the research programme Europe in the Middle East-the Middle East in Europe (EUME). This was funded by the Forum Transregionale Studien, Max Weber Sfitung, Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland and the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies in Beirut (AUB) between 26 August and 6 September 2019. As a result of the ties developed through this I am currently coorganising a seminar series with EUME and the Institut d'histoire du temps present (IHTP, part of the French CNRS) on a global history of the 1980s in and seen from the global south. This particularly engages in questions of who we produce history for and how we communicate it. In addition to co-ordination, I have organised 2 workshops in this series at the University of Portsmouth (29 January and 22 April 2020) and have contributing to writing blog pieces for wider audiences. PLEASE NOTE AS A RESULT OF THE COVID-19 SITUATION, IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THE 22 APRIL WORKSHOP TO TAKE PLACE
Collaborator Contribution EUME: 1 workshop/ 1 public event in Berlin 27 and 28 May - PLEASE NOTE AS A RESULT OF THE COVID-19 SITUATION, IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THIS TO TAKE PLACE IHTP-CNRS: 10 seminars (aimed at MA and PhD students) - PLEASE NOTE AS A RESULT OF THE COVID-19 SITUATION, IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THIS TO TAKE PLACE
Impact The development of this seminar series has been very much hampered by the Covid-19 situation, which has meant that the physical seminar could not take place, and participants were also redirected into online teaching responsibilities and caring/ homeschool responsibilities meaning that they did not have the capacity for the seminar series to go online.
Start Year 2019
 
Description Development of a transnational seminar series on a global history of the 1980 in and seen from the global south 
Organisation National Center for Scientific Research (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS)
Country France 
Sector Academic/University 
PI Contribution I was selected - after international competition - to present the Generation Independence documentary series (and broader project) at a two-week long Transregional Academy on 'Fragment-Power-Public: Narrative, Authority and Circulation in Archival Work' within the framework of the research programme Europe in the Middle East-the Middle East in Europe (EUME). This was funded by the Forum Transregionale Studien, Max Weber Sfitung, Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland and the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies in Beirut (AUB) between 26 August and 6 September 2019. As a result of the ties developed through this I am currently coorganising a seminar series with EUME and the Institut d'histoire du temps present (IHTP, part of the French CNRS) on a global history of the 1980s in and seen from the global south. This particularly engages in questions of who we produce history for and how we communicate it. In addition to co-ordination, I have organised 2 workshops in this series at the University of Portsmouth (29 January and 22 April 2020) and have contributing to writing blog pieces for wider audiences. PLEASE NOTE AS A RESULT OF THE COVID-19 SITUATION, IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THE 22 APRIL WORKSHOP TO TAKE PLACE
Collaborator Contribution EUME: 1 workshop/ 1 public event in Berlin 27 and 28 May - PLEASE NOTE AS A RESULT OF THE COVID-19 SITUATION, IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THIS TO TAKE PLACE IHTP-CNRS: 10 seminars (aimed at MA and PhD students) - PLEASE NOTE AS A RESULT OF THE COVID-19 SITUATION, IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE FOR THIS TO TAKE PLACE
Impact The development of this seminar series has been very much hampered by the Covid-19 situation, which has meant that the physical seminar could not take place, and participants were also redirected into online teaching responsibilities and caring/ homeschool responsibilities meaning that they did not have the capacity for the seminar series to go online.
Start Year 2019
 
Description Creation of Facebook page for Generation Independence 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Creation of trilingual Facebook page @generationindependence. As of 10/3/20 had 1,540 page likes and an average post reach of 39,200 people. The Facebook page has sparked multilingual engagement and exchange (across Arabic and French speakers, and some English speakers), the sharing of personal testimony about the same period, page followers helping the PI locate images of places and examples of poems referred to in the documentaries, and messages of thanks to the interviewees.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019,2020
URL https://www.facebook.com/generationindependence/
 
Description Creation of the project YouTube channel 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Creation of YouTube channel (linked to website and Facebook page) to host the documentary shorts. Views for videos currently publicly available (correct as of 10/3/20) are:
1) The long history of a short-lived statue [1,078 views]
2) The sovereignty of the skies [490 views]
3) The place of stories from home [943 views]
4) The lands of my father [2,045 views, posted on 7/3/20]
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019,2020
URL https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqzMMJ68uComy_XCfwGUmIw
 
Description Creation of the project website: www.generation-independence.com 
Form Of Engagement Activity Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Creation of trilingual website (Arabic, French, English) to host the project, videos and associated artwork. This included an accompanying text written by the PI explaining the project in an accessible way.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019,2020
URL http://www.generation-independence.com/
 
Description Decolonising the Academy, the Curriculum and the History of Decolonisation at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact This was a study day organised by the PI at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Study, engaging in questions of how we do history and who we do it for. It was very well attended by students, teachers and third sector practitioners, and had speakers from the Netherlands, Indonesia, Belgium, France and the UK. It provided a wide-ranging discussion of what it mean to decolonise (and not just 'diversify') the curriculum, as well as provide practical tools and examples for teachers and practitioners to apply this in their teaching, research and practice.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://nias.knaw.nl/projects/decolonising-the-academy-the-curriculum-and-the-history-of-decolonisat...
 
Description Doing history differently: presentation of the Generation Independence project and roundtable at the Maison Française, Oxford 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact This talk presented the Generation Independence project through the screening of two of the documentary shorts, and a discussion of work in progress artwork, with the PI (Natalya Vince), the co-director/editor Walid Benkhaled and the Cultural Manager/ Curator Toufik Douib. This was the springboard into a broader discussion about how we do history and who we do it for: "The explosion in the production of transnational history has coincided with significant restrictions on who can write history, and who has access to reading it. Scholars from the Global South have increasing difficulties obtaining visas to study archives outside of their home countries or travel to conferences, on top of the prohibitive costs. The relationship between research assistants based in the Global South and academics leading projects in the Global North can be exploitative. Academic work is increasingly published in English, and despite the shift towards Open Access, monographs regularly cost around £70. In the Global North, calls to 'decolonise' the curriculum have often been appropriated by university management as a marketing strategy, resulting in superficial 'diversifying' rather than root-and-branch decolonisation. In this context, this is a good occasion to think about how we might do history differently, outside of institutional structures."
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://mfo.web.ox.ac.uk/event/generation-independence-algeria-peoples-history
 
Description Participation in a two-week long workshop on authority and circulation in archival work (academics and practitioners) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact The PI (Natalya Vince) and the film editor/co-director (Walid Benkhaled) were selected after a competitive application process to participate in a two-week long Transregional Academy on the theme 'Fragment-Power-Public: Narrative, Authority and Circulation in Archival Work', within the framework of the research programme Europe in the Middle East-The Middle East. Funded by the Forum Transregionale Studien, the Max Weber Stiftung - Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland and the Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages of the American University of Beirut (AUB), Beirut, Lebanon (26 Aug-6 Sept). We were invited to present the Generation Independence project. The workshop provided the opportunity for extensive discussions/ exchanges of best practice in the co-production of knowledge and reaching new, non-academic audiences.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL https://academies.hypotheses.org/6231