Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Documenting lived histories of Partition collaboratively across the communal divide
Part of the Annual South Asia lecture series with Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla hosted by McMaster University. Learn more about the series here: english.humanities.mcmaster.ca/annual-south-asia-lecture
The 1947 Partition Archive was born in 2010, in response to a lack of archival documentation on the lived history of India and Pakistan’s traumatic 1947 Partition, which marked the end of British rule in South Asia. By developing a unique crowdsourcing protocol refined through community participation and feedback, the Partition Archive is democratizing the preservation of historical memory. The Archive is also shining a light on previously overlooked correlations between Partition, World War Il, and other global trends of that time period, which can open up new avenues of research and also support inter-generational healing.
About the speaker
Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla is founder of the 1947 Partition Archive, which has documented over 12,000 oral histories from survivors of India and Pakistan’s 1947 Partition, also recognized as the largest mass refugee crisis of the 20th century. Previously, she was an experimental condensed matter physicist who completed her tenure as a post-doctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley.
Documenting lived histories of Partition collaboratively across the communal divide
Part of the Annual South Asia lecture series with Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla hosted by McMaster University. Learn more about the series here: english.humanities.mcmaster.ca/annual-south-asia-lecture
The 1947 Partition Archive was born in 2010, in response to a lack of archival documentation on the lived history of India and Pakistan’s traumatic 1947 Partition, which marked the end of British rule in South Asia. By developing a unique crowdsourcing protocol refined through community participation and feedback, the Partition Archive is democratizing the preservation of historical memory. The Archive is also shining a light on previously overlooked correlations between Partition, World War Il, and other global trends of that time period, which can open up new avenues of research and also support inter-generational healing.
About the speaker
Dr. Guneeta Singh Bhalla is founder of the 1947 Partition Archive, which has documented over 12,000 oral histories from survivors of India and Pakistan’s 1947 Partition, also recognized as the largest mass refugee crisis of the 20th century. Previously, she was an experimental condensed matter physicist who completed her tenure as a post-doctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley.
