Diaspora Writes
Where do our stories begin?
Where do our stories begin? A project dedicated to surfacing the hidden histories of Balkan diaspora communities across the globe.
About
Why archival silences?
The term "archival silence" refers to the absence of a community or experience from the historical record not because nothing happened, but because no institution thought it worth preserving. For the Kosovar-Albanian diaspora community, this silence is profound. The mass migrations of the 20th century, labour migration, wartime displacement, post-conflict dispersal, left behind hundreds of people whose stories exist only in private hands, if at all.
Breaking Archival Silences is a long-term project to change that. Working with diaspora communities across the UK, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and beyond, we collect, digitise, and contextualise the personal and community archives that have never entered the public record and we make them freely available to researchers, families, and future generations.
How we work
Recovering lost records
Many diaspora families hold photographs, letters, and documents that have never been catalogued or digitised. We work with communities to identify, preserve, and contextualise these materials before they are lost.
Oral history
Written records alone cannot capture the texture of lived experience. Our oral history programme records first- and second-generation voices, creating a permanent audio archive of migration stories.
Community co-creation
Archives are not neutral. We work alongside community members — not just about them — to ensure that the people whose histories are being preserved have agency over how those histories are told.
Open access
All materials collected through the project are made freely available through our digital archive. We believe these histories belong to the communities that created them.
"Every photograph kept in a shoebox is an act of resistance against forgetting."
Diasporas Speaking
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Breaking Archival Silences
Do you have archival material to share?
Learn more about the Breaking Archival Silences project.