This project builds on the Coptic Culture Conservation Collective’s existing database of stories, legends, social practices and oral histories from Coptic communities in Upper Egypt and the Middle East Culture Collective’s ‘Syriac Christian communities in Syria’ initiative. It aims to bring heritage alive and adapt it as an entry point for well-being through participatory action research.
The research team is bringing heritage researchers, digital archivists, and development policy actors in conversation with each other to explore the role of heritage repertoires contribution to inclusive societies among religious and ethnic minorities facing violent contexts at national, regional, and global levels.
The project’s relevance lies in understanding how making development more ‘heritage-aware’ can expose sources of intersecting inequalities that are not conventionally understood when heritage is overlooked. The research team is seeking to understand, in a gender-sensitive manner, how people render meaning to their existence, purpose, and status through heritage repertoires in Egypt, Syria, and beyond. It also aims to interrogate the role of heritage repertoires in relation to building social solidarity by, for example, redressing gender-based intergenerational economic justice issues in Egypt and addressing age-related vulnerability facing senior citizens in Syria through strengthening intergenerational bonds.
Resources
Opinion
Articles
Reports
Key contacts
