Kirstie A. Kwarteng | Digital Diasporas, Digital Histories
Channel: MSU Digital Humanities
Date: 2019-05-28

Kirstie A. Kwarteng | SOAS, University of London

Full Title: Digital Diasporas, Digital Histories: Preserving Ghana’s Past in the Digital Age

Digital technology has become a key factor in the formation, growth, and maintenance of diaspora communities. For many diaspora communities, including African diaspora communities, communication using digital technology has allowed them to maintain their transnational networks by increasing the ease of which information is shared. Simultaneously, the rise of digital technology has also seen an increase in endeavors to digitize African history. These efforts have been lauded as digitization is associated with greater accessibility to information. However, the efforts to digitize African history are conducted mainly by universities, meaning increased access to information may benefit academia more than the general public. Additionally, Africans often do not control or profit from digitization efforts. These issues present an opportunity for African diaspora communities to use the digital technology that has helped them maintain their communities to aid in the preservation of their histories.

As such, this presentation will present the work of The Nana Project, an online archive dedicated to preserving Ghana’s history through the voices of Ghanaian elders in Ghana and in the Ghanaian diaspora (www.thenanaproject.org). The aims of The Nana Project are to 1) decolonize African history through the use of personal narratives, 2) increase accessibility to information on African history, 3) preserve African history in modern formats and 4) reclaim the legacy of oral storytelling from our elders through crowdsourcing personal histories. The presentation will highlight topics and themes that can be found in the archive, barriers to modernizing the collection of oral histories, and how initiatives like The Nana Project can be used to connect diasporas and their homelands through their shared history.

 For more information about the 2019 Global DH Symposium visit msuglobaldh.org.