Starting grants UNITA Decolonizing Women’s History: Collecting Archives and Oral Histories
Participant details (individuals, institutions)
UNITO project team: Silvia Bruzzi (researcher, Principal investigator, history, CPS), Julie Abbou (researcher, French linguistics, CPS), Elisabetta Benigni (associate professor, Arabic language and literature, Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Modern Cultures), Arianna Santero (researcher, sociology, CPS) and Ester Micalizzi (postdoc, sociology, CPS).
UNITA Partner participants and institutions: Simona Tobia (s.tobia @ univ-pau.fr associate professor, English Department, Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour) and Lucian Vesalon (lucian.vesalon @ e-uvt.ro Departamentul de Ştiinţe Politice, lecturer, political studies, Universitatea de Vest din Timișoara). Gemma Piérola Narvarte ( gemma.pierola @ unavarra.es Associate professor of Contemporary History and Gender History, CIENCIAS HUMANAS Y DE LA EDUCACIÓN Public University of Navarra).
Decolonizing Women’s History: Collecting Archives and Oral Histories addresses the marginalisation of colonised women's voices in European public history. It aims to respond to a colonial legacy that still marks European cultural heritage, where women from former European colonies appear over-exposed in colonial images, while their histories and narratives are often invisible, not only in European national archives, but also in public history. Even though they have been actively involved in crucial political and social events of contemporary European history, they still appear as marginal and often invisible subjects in European public history. The project seeks to address this issue in a constructive way by researching, collecting and disseminating written, visual and oral histories of African and Middle Eastern women who were actively involved in the development of European feminist movements. Workshops on oral history methodology will be conducted to pursue a decolonial approach to women's and gender history. Dissemination activities will include academic publications and a podcast to reach a wider audience and challenge the European colonial legacy from a decolonial and gender perspective. The project consists of a multidisciplinary team of scholars and adopts an interdisciplinary approach, from the training activities to the research and dissemination of the results. It deserves special attention to multilingualism, not only because the research team will work in a working environment where the partners will regularly use six European and non-European languages (Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Arabic and English), but also because the scientific and research dissemination products (articles, chapters and podcast episodes) will be multilingual. The first workshop involves a range of speakers who are expert oral history practitioners, to introduce theoretical frameworks, interviewing techniques and ethical standards. The research team and other invited scholars will be empowered to put these elements into practice and to carry out one to three interviews each. This will be followed by a second workshop which will take place mid-project and will be focused on the practical aspects concerning the body of interviews collected by the research team, with the aim of building an oral history sound counter-archive to face the European Colonial Legacy at the prism of gender. The dissemination activities of the project include not only scientific publications of the research team (chapters and articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals), but also a podcast based on the oral histories and their transcripts, which will reach a wider audience.
