This talk addresses the concept of “Living Archives," which has evolved from Professor Allan's ongoing research as an ethnographer, filmmaker and archivist working with Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon. It builds on the Nakba Archive – a grassroots testimonial initiative that has documented histories of forced expulsion of 1948 – and is premised on the reimagining of archive as a creative, participatory practice that resists fixity and centers process. It draws inspiration from recent shifts in how Palestinian scholars, writers, and artists are rethinking mnemonic and documentary witness practices, and explores camp spaces as stateless archives, mnemonically embodied rather than institutionally housed.

The talk will be preceded at 4pm by a showing of Partition, a documentary directed by Professor Allan which brings together colonial films from British Mandate Palestine with recordings from the Nakba Archive.