2911, 2023

Documenting resistance and confronting legacies. Working with British missionary archive collections from the Caribbean region.

By Special Collections|29th November 2023|Collections & Research|0 comments

Content advice: Please note that this blog discusses sensitive subject matter relating to enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade, which may be triggering or difficult to read. In today’s blog, we consider the question of how, as archivists, researchers, and communities, we might critically engage with colonial histories in the archives to understand and acknowledge the legacies of enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade. By looking at some recent initiatives

1605, 2023

Part 2/ Locating Voices of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour in 19th Century Missionary Periodicals

By Special Collections|16th May 2023|Behind the scenes, Collections & Research|0 comments

Today’s blog comes from Dr Joanne Davis, Research Associate with the Centre of World Christianity at SOAS. Following on from her last blog, Jo reflects on the completion of a successful collaborative research project, BIPOC Voices in the Victorian Periodical Press, which has recently launched on onemorevoice.org. This work introduces and documents a series of unknown or little-studied pieces from Victorian missionary periodicals by BIPOC creators. Here she presents a quick overview of the

2803, 2022

Part 3/ Cook Islander missionaries: recovering hidden histories from missionary archives: Isaia Papehia’s travels in Britain

By Special Collections|28th March 2022|Collections & Research|0 comments

Continuing our short series of blogs looking at the instrumental and largely forgotten role of indigenous Cook Islanders in the evangelisation of the Pacific region from the early 19th century, and research which is rediscovering evidence of the personal histories of these men and women found in European missionary archives. This week’s guest blog comes from Rod Dixon (Mangaia, Cook Islands), who shares his research into the overseas experiences of Isaia Papehia

2910, 2021

Locating Voices of Black, Indigenous and People of Colour in 19th Century Missionary Periodicals

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|29th October 2021|Collections & Research|0 comments

Today’s blog comes from Dr Joanne Davis, Research Associate with the Centre of World Christianity at SOAS. Following on from her last piece, Jo reflects on a period of research in SOAS Special Collections for a new project, ‘Recovering BIPOC Voices from the Victorian Periodical Press’, which establishes a publishing partnership between SOAS Special Collections, an open access digital humanities initiative One More Voice (onemorevoice.org) which is focused on recovering non-European contributions from Victorian-era British colonial archives, and

1810, 2021

Part 2/ Cook Islander missionaries: recovering hidden histories from missionary archives

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|18th October 2021|Collections & Research|2 comments

This week’s blog marks celebrations of the bicentenary of the arrival of the Christian gospel in the Cook Islands taking place in Aitutaki this month, and picks up from our previous blog which looked at the instrumental and largely forgotten role of indigenous Cook Islanders in the evangelisation of the Pacific region from the early 19th century, and new research which is rediscovering evidence of the personal histories of these men and women

0803, 2021

Women’s History Month 2021: NoSuthu Soga Jotelo and the One More Voice Project

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|8th March 2021|Collections & Research|5 comments

To mark International Women’s Day, today’s blog comes from Dr Joanne Davis, an African literary scholar, whose research on Reverend Tiyo ‘Zisani’ Soga has led her to archives across the world. In uncovering and examining a unique letter by Soga’s mother, NoSuthu Soga Jotelo, Joanne has made a fascinating contribution to a new and developing online resource, One More Voice. This International Women’s History Month, SOAS Special Collections presents a new

0210, 2020

Cook Islander missionaries: recovering hidden histories from missionary archives

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|2nd October 2020|Collections & Research|6 comments

This week’s blog looks ahead to the bicentenary of the arrival of the Christian gospel in the Cook Islands which will take place in October 2021, and the instrumental and largely forgotten role of indigenous Cook Islanders in the evangelisation of the region from the early 19th century. New research is rediscovering the histories of these men and women, highlighting their personal commitment to what began as a foreign mission

1706, 2020

Madagascar on SOAS Digital Collections

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|17th June 2020|Collections & Research|3 comments

In this week’s blog we would like to shout about SOAS Library’s Madagascar collections, a fantastically rich regional resource which attracts visitors from Madagascar as well as the international scholarly community. These collections have experienced a burst of activity in recent months in terms of new digital content being added to our Digital Collections. New content has included striking images from the Royal Court, focused on Madagascar’s Queens, some of whom we

2303, 2020

Women’s History Month 2020: Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|23rd March 2020|Collections & Research|1 comments

To end our series of blogs to mark Women’s History Month 2020, we focus on Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati (1858-1922), Indian scholar, feminist, educator and social reformer. Published works by Ramabai, accounts of her life and photographs can be found in our collections at SOAS Library. Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati was born Ramabai Dongre, a high-caste Brahmin. Her father was a Sanskrit scholar and taught her Sanskrit at home. Orphaned at the

0410, 2019

Black History Month 2019: Thomas Birch Freeman

By Special Collections, SOAS Library|4th October 2019|Collections & Research|0 comments

As SOAS marks Black History Month we continue to hi-light historical materials held by Special Collections, which reveal the long-standing Black presence in the UK, as well as the contributions and achievements of Black peoples in local, national and international arenas. This week we look at papers relating to Thomas Birch Freeman (1809-1890), an Anglo-African Wesleyan Methodist minister, missionary, botanist and colonial official in West Africa. Freeman was born in Twyford, Hampshire, England, on 6th