JISC

Based on 50 years of scholarship and recognised as the world's most comprehensive study of tribal cultures in South Asia, the Furer-Haimendorf Archive is now online. Including cine film, photographs and written journals, this is an incredibly valuable archive of cultures before the influence of mid-twentieth century external influences.

This project will enable people from across the world to see and learn from a unique and valuable archive, which has currently very limited access.

Fürer-Haimendorf was one of the few anthropologists of the inter-war generation in Europe to realise the importance of visual documentation. Yet, while his field notes, manuscripts and publications have continued to provide an invaluable resource to researcher, lack of specialised expertise and funding has meant that his collection of 26,000 images remain inaccessible and therefore underused.

This has digitised, researched and produced metadata for approximately 10,000 photographs and an unpublished field diary from the Fürer-Haimendorf archive, all of which are held in Special Collections at SOAS.

The project will also used specialists in the relevant tribal cultures to catalogue these images and cross-reference a select group of them together with an unpublished diary, film footage and written material in the collection.

By uncovering this hidden resource, the project will contribute to the academic knowledge and public understanding of endangered cultures and the history of culture change.

Lead site: School of Oriental and African Studies