What will happen to your family’s memories when you are gone?
The article explores the growing trend of personal archiving, where individuals curate family histories through photographs, letters, and personal objects. Experts suggest these archives offer unique insights into lived experiences and everyday history that institutional archives often overlook.
Why it matters
Personal archiving serves as a vital tool for preserving cultural heritage and individual identity, providing a counter-narrative to official historical records.
Debankita Das’s interest in personal archiving stems from her family’s direct experience of the Partition. “My grandfather and his family migrated from Dhaka to the eastern Himalayan region of Bengal in 1946, while my grandmother comes from Assam’s Tezpur region. So I wanted to look at these interlinked histories,” says the doctoral researcher at the School of Social Sciences, University of Hyderabad.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in