The South Asian Studies Institute held a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) funded workshop on August 24th and 25th. The workshop brought together scholars, community historians, librarians, archivists, curators, digital humanities experts and students to develop a South Asian Canadian Digital Archive (SACDA) and a network of South Asian Canadian Studies.
The workshop was the first step towards creating synergy between different organizations and partners around the creation of a pan-Canadian South Asian Canadian digital archive. The keynote speaker for the workshop included Dr. Nicole Ranganath. Dr. Ranganath is a Historian & Assistant Adjunct Professor in the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program at the University of California, Davis who specializes in the history of the South Asian diaspora. She is the historian and curator of the Pioneering Punjabis Digital Archive, a new resource that houses over 700 diaries, letters, photographs, films, and oral histories documenting the history of Punjabi Americans in California over the last 120 years (http://pioneeringpunjabis.ucdavis.edu) . Presenters also presented on their own initiatives in the area of archival development and contributed ideas to a long-term vision.
In addition to Dr. Ranganath’s expertise, the workshop included a conversation with Samip Mallik, the Executive Director of the South Asian American Digital Archive (https://www.saada.org/). His advice and guidance in the development of a Canadian archive was invaluable to the attendants at the workshop. The workshop produced long term plans to be developed under a SACDA rubric of pan-Canada archives.
