VII.i Centre for Digital Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CeDAAME)
VII.ii Fürer-Haimendorf Photographs Online
VII.ii Livingstone Online
VII.iv Guide to the Archive of the English Presbyterian Mission

VII.i Centre for Digital Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CeDAAME)

SOAS has recently received a grant from JISC to set up the Centre for Digital Asia, Africa and the Middle East (CeDAAME), with the primary aim of developing a SOAS strategy for the digitisation of its resources.

VII.ii Fürer-Haimendorf Photographs Online

CeDAAME’s first digitisation project features the photographic archive of Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1909-1995).  This collection, which includes photographs, cine-film and written materials, is widely recognised as the world's most comprehensive visual documentation of tribal cultures in South Asia and the Himalayas in the mid 20th century.  It reflects his fifty years of scholarship and is widely recognised as the world's most comprehensive study of tribal cultures in South Asia and the Himalayas.  It is especially valuable because it documents these cultures before many changed rapidly with the advent of external civil administration after the mid-twentieth century.

VII.ii Livingstone Online

Images of David Livingstone’s letters held at SOAS Library are now available to view through the Livingstone Online project.

Livingstone Online is a research project based at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL.  Its aims are to collect together and edit Livingstone’s medical and scientific correspondence online, mounting digital images and transcripts of original manuscripts held in different repositories across the country.

At SOAS, Livingstone’s correspondence and papers are found with the archives of the London Missionary Society (LMS) and relate largely to his period of service as a missionary of the Society between 1840 and 1857 in their African mission field.  These comprise over 100 original letters from Livingstone to LMS officials, family and friends, largely dating from the 1840s and 1850s, in addition to a series of letters known as the ‘Bruce Livingstone Collection’, comprising letters from Livingstone to his father-in-law and fellow missionary, Robert Moffat, between 1844 and 1857.  There are also 15 letters written by Livingstone’s wife, Mary (née Moffat), 1852-1855, directed to the Society.

VII.iv Guide to the Archive of the English Presbyterian Mission

The guide gives a historical overview of the development of the English Presbyterian Mission in its overseas mission fields, outlines the records available in the archive at SOAS Library and showcases a number of fascinating images taken from the photographic collection.  On February 9th 1945, the Presbyterian Church offices in London were struck by a V2 rocket, destroying many of the 19th and early 20th century records.  Surviving records include minutes, correspondence, reports on mission work, financial papers, individual and subject files, printed materials and photographs, dating from the late 1840s to the mid 1970s.

Production of the guide has been made possible by funding from the United Reformed Church and the Council for World Mission and marks the completion of a project to re-catalogue the archive online, now available through the SOAS Archive Catalogue.

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