The editors of a ground-breaking new study about emotions and archives which includes work by a researcher at The National Archives has won a prestigious award.
Archives and Emotions: International Dialogues across Past, Present and Future won the Waldo Gifford Leland Award for excellent writing and usefulness for archivists.
The study examines the role emotions play in the creation and organisation of archives.
Importantly, it also recognises the reactions of historians, researchers and communities who find themselves confronted by sometimes challenging records.
It includes a chapter cowritten by Iqbal Singh, Regional Community Partnerships Manager at The National Archives, and Prof Kevin Lu, from Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.
Iqbal Singh, Regional Community Partnerships Manager, said: “This is a very exciting award. My work in this area was prompted by a very early encounter with a record at The National Archives, which made me aware that the histories I was encountering were far more complicated they were necessarily being presented.
“For me the pivotal moment came when a map of the division of India and Pakistan reminded me of how my parents, a Sikh mother and a Muslim father, left ancestral homelands to travel thousands of miles across new borders to their new homes.”
Archives and Emotions: International Dialogues across Past, Present and Future was edited by Ilaria Scaglia, senior lecturer in modern history at Aston University, UK, and Valeria Vanesio, lecturer in the Department of Library Information and Archive Sciences at the University of Malta.
