Decolonizing Southeast Asian Sound Archives (DeCoSEAS) receives €650k AHRC grant
9 June 2021
The Decolonizing Southeast Asian Sound Archives (DeCoSEAS) research and community engagement project has received an AHRC grant of €650k for a three-year project (2021-2024).
Dr Cristina Martinez-Juan, Research Fellow in Philippine Studies who is the Principal Investigator for the British leg of the grant, will work with the British Library, the BBC Archives and SOAS Radio, to not only digitize and make accessible the heritage of South East Asian colonial sound archived in the U.K., but also work with an international consortium of researchers and artists from Europe and South East Asia to engage with these sound repositories.
The project renegotiates established understandings of heritage curation by disclosing three unique sound collections, located in Europe, with extremely rare music and sound from Southeast Asia (SEA). These collections have worldwide fame in terms of their quality, quantity and diversity, but are barely accessible. The project responds to the European Call “Cultural Heritage, Identities and Perspectives: Responding to Changing Societies” (CHIP).
The multidisciplinary and transnational research team encompasses expertise in (ethno)musicology, sound studies, anthropology, linguistics, digital humanities (audio-visual production, digital data preservation) and theatre studies. The project’s management structure and procedures are network based, working with partners in archives, museums, media and festivals in The Philippines, Laos, Indonesia, The Netherlands, France, the UK and Germany.