Annual Elizabeth Colson Lecture 2025 | Living Archives: Palestinian Displacement in Lebanon
Professor Diana Allan (Associate Professor, ISID and Department of Anthropology, McGill University)
Wednesday, 11 June 2025, 5.15pm to 6.15pm
Seminar Room 3, Oxford Department of International Development, 3 Mansfield Road, Oxford OX1 3TB
Hosted by RSC
About the lecture
This talk addresses the concept of “Living Archives," which has evolved from my ongoing research as an ethnographer, filmmaker and archivist working with Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon. It builds on the Nakba Archive - a grassroots testimonial initiative that has documented histories of forced expulsion of 1948 - and is premised on the reimagining of archive as a creative, participatory practice that resists fixity and centers process. It draws inspiration from recent shifts in how Palestinian scholars, writers, and artists are rethinking mnemonic and documentary witness practices, and explores camp spaces as stateless archives, mnemonically embodied rather than institutionally housed.