Lahore Living Museum of Oral History: Shared History through Generative Participatory Practice
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
6:30 pm
- Venue
- SOAS, University of London
- Room
- Wolfson Lecture Theatre (Paul Webley Wing)
- Event type
- Seminar
About this event
Explore a new participatory approach to urban memory, connecting Lahore’s lived, shifting histories with the British South Asian diaspora.
This research project proposes a novel framework to reconnect the fragmented urban temporalities of Lahore with the British South Asian diaspora. It challenges the traditional, static nature of conventional museum practices particularly in South Asia, where history is often curated as a fixed, inanimate object. In contrast, this project re-envisions the museum as a dynamic, living entity that evolves through the active, participatory engagement of its community. By situating the practice within the context of Lahore, a city where history is lived, layered, and perpetually in motion, this project proposes a mobile, sensory intervention that builds an archive not through static preservation, but through the ongoing, collaborative act of storytelling.
The research critically examines the dialectical relationship between the urban fabric and its inhabitants, moving beyond the colonial tendency to view cities as static, manageable objects of administration. Drawing upon theories of urban rhythm and place temporalities, it analyses how cities are not merely containers of history but are 'composed' through the daily, sensory, and often discordant experiences of those who live within them. In the context of Lahore, this relationship is uniquely defined by a friction between colonial spatial legacies which sought to discipline the citizens through the built environment and the lived, often unruly, reality of its people. By utilizing a participatory oral history framework, this research interrogates how these rhythms of urban life are renegotiated and reclaimed. This research argues that the city acts as a site of constant becoming where the interplay between the physical landscape and the individual’s memory serves as the primary mechanism for maintaining identity across shifting local and transnational boundaries.
About the Speaker
Aysha Bilal is a multi-disciplinary researcher with interest in cultural studies, digital oral history, documentary photography and communication. Bilal is the Charles Wallace Postdoctoral Fellowship awardee 2026 with a PhD in ‘Lahore through its Oral History: An Audio-Visual Practice to Explore Cultural Transformation’. Bilal studied Masters in Graphic Design at Punjab University and later obtained her Masters degree in Photography from Nottingham Trent University, UK in 2014. Whilst exploring liquid identities of individuals, cultures and societies under and above the influence of 9/11 in the colonial societies.
Bilal is Associate Professor and Chairperson of the Departments of Fine Arts and Art & Design at Home Economics University (UHE), previously Chair of Visual Communication & Design. Alongside her independent practice, her recent work includes Fly on the Wall at the Pakistan National Council of Arts (2024), curated by Aasim Akhter, and the Speak exhibition at the UN in Geneva (2023), curated by Shahidul Alam.
She was a recipient of the UNESCO photography call Female Journalists in Challenging Environments (2021). Her solo exhibitions include Identity Insistently Public (China, 2017) and A Normal Pakistani (UK, 2015, Inside Out Project). Selected group exhibitions include Studio Waley (Lahore, 2021), Is Saye Key Parcham Taley (Karachi, 2016), and multiple presentations of A Normal Pakistani in Nottingham (2014–15).
Her book A Normal Pakistani was published in the UK in 2015, and she has authored several research articles in national and international journals.
Image credit: Aysha Bilal
