Archives in Times of War: Scattered Families and Vanishing Past in Contemporary Syria

Wartime Syria questions conventional understandings of the archive as a physical repository of documents and set of institutional practices.

While Syrian state archives have fallen victim to destruction and plundering, Syrians in the diaspora have been saving and retrieving copies of mundane legal documents originally stored in state repositories as these documents are official proof of legal identities, education and relations to kin.

These papers are fundamental in any migratory project since they are needed for numerous procedures, such as getting married. These documents are also central in preserving a connection to family members in Syria and in the diaspora.

ARCHIVWAR examines these papers’ ubiquity, so far undetected in the study of the Syrian predicament, and the dislocation of state archives in private repositories to rethink the concept of the archive as a form of care.

By examining family archives within the Syrian diaspora in Berlin, the action first aims to capture the modes of care and the relations to affective and physical presences and absences stored in these documents. Second, the project aims to make accessible a collective history-in-the-making about the Syrian predicament in Europe.

Built upon the skills and experiences I have acquired along my research path, the action combines ethnographic methods with oral history research while employing an innovative format of engaged public scholarship.

The project blends open science practices with immersive collaboration with the research participants to consolidate European society’s scientific literacy on wartime Syria and its long-lasting effects in Europe.

ARCHIVWAR aims to contribute to the study of war and migration as well as of the archive and alternative forms of knowledge production, but as well widen my knowledge and skills in the field of Social Anthropology, Migration Studies, curatorship and and open access practices to complete my maturation as an engaged social scientist.