Center for Public History (CPH)

“But we belong to that very India which finds no place in the textbooks of history” - Rabindranath Tagore

Dr. Srijan Sandip Mandal leading a heritage walk about Tipu Sultan for the general public at Bangalore Fort in February 2020 as part of the India Heritage Walk Festival.

Lead:

Dr. Indira Chowdhury, Scholar-in-residence and Director, Centre for Public History

Team:

Dr. Siddhi Bhandari, Faculty

Mandate

Understanding, exploring and creating new engagements with history.

Public History takes on the challenge of interpreting the past and working with history outside of academia. We work with people’s experiences of the past to create a new understanding of history. Our research informs our approach to public history. We reconceptualise, reimagine and transform museums, heritage sites and archives, often using new technologies and always including voices that were earlier left out of the grand narratives of history.

Ongoing research projects by CPH members

Indira Chowdhury: “Oral histories of Midwives in India”. Ongoing research and book project.

This project began with my long interviews with Sulagitti Narasimha, a traditional midwife from Pavagada village who lived in Tumkur until her death in 2018. This project has also started looking at midwives in other locations such as Chhattisgarh and will look at the history and culture of reproductive health and explore the ways in which we can understand bodily knowledge and community knowledge.

Siddhi Bhandari: “Photographers and Photography in India: A Sociological Analysis”. Book project.

This project began as a Ph.D. at the Delhi School of Economics. The project explores the professionalisation of the work of photographers in the Indian context. The monograph will further develop ideas of materiality and technology related to photography.

Achievements

CPH members have received the following awards and fellowships

Dr. Indira Chowdhury

Rabindra Puraskar (Tagore Prize), 2001 for her book The Frail Hero and Virile History: Gender and the Politics of Culture in Colonial Bengal (OUP, 1998)
New India Fellowship, 2007 for book on the history of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.
Visiting Fellow, Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 2011.
Editorial Board, Palgrave’s Studies in Oral History (2011 onwards
International Editorial Advisory Board, Oral History: Journal of the Oral History Society (2013 onwards).
President, Oral History Association of India, 2013-2016.
President, International Oral History Association, 2014-2016.
Series Editor with Michael Frisch (SUNY, Buffalo), Public History in International Perspective - Theory, Method, and Public Practice. (New book series from De Gruyter, Berlin – Publication began in 2018).
Curator of Archival Section, Marg September 2020 onwards.
Invited to give the Insight lecture at Newcastle University, UK, 30 October 2020.

Dr. Siddhi Bhandari

Doctoral Fellowship from the Indian Council of Social Science Research, Delhi from 2013 - 2015
Two time recipient of Delhi University Vice-chancellor travel grant to present at the Royal Anthropological Institute’s conference, Manchester June 2015; and Visual South-Asia conference, Dhaka May 2017.
Awarded the French Embassy travel grant to attend the 25th European Conference on South Asian Studies, Paris, July 2018
Author’s Workshop on Visuals in South-Asia, CCMG, Jamila Milia Islamia, New Delhi February 2020
Cleared the National Eligibility Test conducted by the UGC in 2013

Conferences

CPH has been organising conferences in new areas since its inception. It has organised some conferences along with national and international organisations.

1-day international conference on “Oral History and the Sense of Legacy” at the National Gallery of Modern Art, 19 July 2011, supported by British Council.
2-day international conference along with the Oral History Association of India, “Oral History in our Times”, November 2013.
5-day international conference along with the International Oral History Association and the Oral History Association of India, “Speaking, Listening, Interpreting: The Critical Engagements of Oral History”, 27 June - 1 July 2016.

Public Lecture Series

In 2021, CPH has instituted a public lecture series on public history that will feature scholars and practitioners dedicated to engaging the past in creative ways beyond the traditional forms prescribed by academia. The inaugural lecture in February 2021 was delivered by Dr Faye Sayer, Reader in Public History and Community Archaeology at the Manchester Metropolitan University, UK

Books and Publications

CPH has created several archival books for scientific and academic institutions, museums and and NGOs.

Citizens and Revolutionaries: An Oral History of IIM Calcutta, Rupa: Delhi, 2012 [Indira Chowdhury, Aarthi Ajit and CPH, designed by Kumkum Nadig]. Kumkum Nadig received the Bronze ‘A’ Design Award for this book in 2017.
Looking Back, Looking forward: The Story of Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, 2016 [Piyusha Chatterjee, Indira Chowdhury and CPH, designed by Kumkum Nadig].
The Story of Sasha, 2016 [Avehi Menon, Indira Chowdhury and CPH, designed by Nupur Bannerjee].
Lives of Objects: Stories from the Indian Museum, 2017 [Indira Chowdhury and CPH, designed by Kumkum Nadig and Prachi Prabhu].
Lessons in Living: Stories from the life of Dr. Triguna Sen: 2018 [Indira Chowdhury, Siddhi Bhandari, Archit Guha and CPH, designed by Kumkum Nadig].
The Botanical Illustration Collection at Lal Bagh: A Catalogue, 3 vols., 2011 [Indira Chowdhury and Sanchia de Souza, designed by Waseem Shaikh].
The Tiger Comes to Town, 2011 [Indira Chowdhury and Aliyeh Rizvi, designed by Waseem Shaikh].
Bangalore Storyscapes: Chapter One: MG Road. [Avehi Menon, designed by Tanvee Nabar.]

Selected Books and Publications by individual CPH members

Dr. Indira Chowdhury

“Looking the Tiger in the Eye: Oral History, Heritage Sites, and Public Culture.” In A Companion to Public History, edited by David Dean (London: Wiley Blackwell, 2018), 149-62.

Growing the Tree of Science: Homi Bhabha and the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (OUP, 2016).

Siddhi Bhandari

“Holi: Gender Dynamics and the Festival of Colours in Northern India”. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. 60 (2017)

“The Making of a Photograph”. In Visuals in South-Asia, edited volume. Routledge, 2020. Forthcoming

Archival Exhibitions and Films

CPH has worked through its consultancy unit ARCH@Srishti to create commemorative exhibitions and films for institutions in India. These exhibitions and films emerged out of the archival work and oral history interviewing that CPH conducted at these institutions.

Dr. M.R. Srinivasan at the “IMSc Fifty Years” exhibition at Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai, January 2013.

Visitors at the listening stations playing oral history excerpts at the “Welcome to the Archives” exhibition at IIM Calcutta, November 2014.

IIM Calcutta: A journey through time [Curated by Indira Chowdhury, Designed by:Agnishikha Choudhury; Graphic design by Sonali Mandke.] 2012
IMSc Fifty years [Curated by Indira Chowdhury and Aarthi Ajit, Designed by Binu Bhaskaran]. Permanent exhibition. 2013
Welcome to the Archives: IIM Calcutta Fifty years. Curated by Alison Burnes, Research and Content by Indira Chowdhury. 2014
IMSc Fifty Years: Virtual exhibition [Chitradip Pramanik].
Film on Institute of Mathematical Sciences done in collaboration with Srishti Films [Sanjay Barnela].

Student work guided by CPH

CPH has guided a student project that used historical and oral history material to understand the relationship between health and nutrition through the creation of a cook book for a local Ayurvedic hospital.

Print output by Shikha Nambiar, student : The Ayurvedic Cookbook: Recipes from the I-AIM Kitchen (Student project with I-AIM, 2013. Recipes from I-AIM), 2013.

Courses offered by CPH

Masters in Public History and Heritage Interpretation

CPH has been instrumental in conceptualising and teaching the postgraduate course in Public History and Heritage Interpretation within the Master of Arts in New Humanities and Design.

CPH Winter Schools

The Centre is the only institution in India that offers a two-week advanced workshop with eminent oral historians from India and abroad, where students are introduced to cutting-edge research going on in oral history. The Winter School in Oral History (WSOH) began in 2013 and is held every alternate year. Over the years WSOH has addressed diverse issues such as Orality, Memory and Social Change, Boundaries and Narratives, Inter-subjectivity, among others. Oral historians who taught here include K. Lalitha (India), Urvashi Butalia (India), Alessandro Portelli (Italy), Miroslav Vanek (Charles University, Prague), Deepa Dhanraj (India), Martha Norkunas (USA), Alexander von Plato (Germany), Meghna Guha Thakurta (Bangladesh), Michael Frisch (USA), Kavita Panjabi (India), and Annie Valk (USA), to name but a few. Kindly visit our School of Continuing, Open and Professional Education (SCOPE) at Srishti Manipal

Winter School in Public History

In 2020, CPH offered the first Winter School in Public History (WSPH) on the theme, “The Public Lives of Objects”. This two-week long advanced workshop had museum curators, historians of science and technology and cultural historians engage with students about material culture and how to think about objects. The faculty included Dr. Klaus Staubermann (Germany), Dr. Roland Wittje (India), Dr. Annapurna Mamidipudi (India), Swarup Bhattacharyya (India) and Dr. Lisa Onaga (Germany). WSPH included practical, hands-on classes in local museums, factories as well as in a silk farm.

Spring School on Family History

In 2021, CPH offered the first Spring School on Family History (SSFH), a two-week online advanced workshop that focusses on Family History, which is the practice of researching and presenting stories from the past of one’s own family or that of others or histories of families or family units in general. The faculty included Professor Jerome de Groot (University of Manchester, UK), Professor Tanya Evans (Macquarie University, Australia), Professor Anna Green (University of Victoria, Wellington, NZ), Dr. Radmila Svarickova (Czech Republic), Dr. Tapti Roy (Independent Scholar and founder of Past Connect, Cambridge, UK), Dr. Ashley Barnwell (University of Melbourne, Australia), and Dr. Menelaos Gkartzios (University of Newcastle, UK).

Certificate Course in Oral History

An intensive short-term course especially designed to introduce participants to Oral History, focusing on theory and practice, including how to curate and present oral histories and basics of archiving audio recordings. The certificate course is occasionally taught along with well-known scholars in the field. CPH has been holding such courses since 2013. CPH has also taught this course at the Department of History, Gauhati University 2013 and at Patan, Nepal in 2015.

Opportunities

CPH offers internships to students and professionals. Interns at CPH work with our current projects that involve researching, writing, transcribing and editing oral history interviews for community and institutional archives. Interns also work with CPH to establish, operate and catalogue archives and sometimes conduct oral history interviews. CPH also welcomes Fullbright and other independently-funded scholars to spend time at the Centre.

Enquiries

For more information about this program, kindly email Indira Chowdhury at indira.chowdhury@manipal.edu