Global and Local Digital Research
The Boys with a Red Camera: Global and Local Digital Research
Ian Magedera
If you ever see a two guys whizzing around Chandannagar in a Toto, descending from time to time to photograph domestic and public heritage sites with a red camera, do please give them a wave. They are Mayukh Sengupta and Indrajit Mondal, two founder members of the project's GPS-enabled heritage photography team. Guided by Ramanuj Konar and using the unique archive of images of the city's recent past gifted to the project by Mr Patit Paban Haldar, this team has been assembling material for the project's free Augmented Reality App. This will allow any location-enabled smartphone user in Chandannagar to point their camera at important houses and monuments and to see, superimposed on the actual real-time image a historical image is taken from the same angle of that place, ten, twenty and maybe a hundred and twenty years ago. A description can also be uploaded and directions to the place from where the user is to the place of interest. This technology, developed by Martin Winchester at the University of Liverpool in conjunction with Iain Jackson (both part of the Hugli River of Cultures project and the University of Liverpool) has already run as Timescape Kolkata and in Hyderabad. Discussions are ongoing in 2020 about how to bring this AR App to a larger number of people.
Urban Fieldwork in Chandannagar: the French Presence
Urban Fieldwork in Chandannagar: On the French Presence Passing beyond the Horizon of Living Memory
Ian Magedera
How does the French presence manifest itself in Chandannagar in 2018, given that a vast number of the citizens who voted in the 1949 referendum are no longer living? Although this is not a research in sociolinguistics, the language question needs to be covered. What is the state of the French language as part of the French presence?
According to Fishman's now-classic Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (1991), French in Chandannagar would appear to have reached the final level of decline – level 8 – which indicates a status in which 'the only remaining speakers of a language are members of the grandparent generation'. This, however, is not the whole story, as French is being learned outside the family at the Indo-French Institute and in a handful of schools in Chandannagar. Lewis and Simons extended Fishman's scale from 8 to 11 levels in 2010 and there is now a choice series of adjectives to describe the final stages to language death.
Fieldwork on Cultural Heritage
Perceptions of Cultural Heritage in Chandannagar
Helle Jorgensen
Heritage is often understood from the monument-centric perspective of officially recognised and legally protected buildings and structures which may, and may not, connect with the intimate histories, memories, practices, and identities of the people who populate a place and make it come alive.
The questions which present themselves with even greater force in the context of Chandannagar as a place with complex cross-cultural histories and relations are:
- How is the concept of heritage understood?
- Who is deemed to have the authority to determine what constitutes the heritage of the city?
- How, if at all, do intimate and officially recognised heritage values and histories connect
- To what extent are heritage values and assets experienced by the residents of the city as sustainable and viable?
Hugli Heritage Audit
Hugli Heritage Audit
Ian Magedera
Rationale
What are the most successful heritage projects in West Bengal from around 2008 to 2018? This audit springs from that simple question, as put to the participants of the April 2018 Round Table for divisional and municipal urban planners held at the British Council, Kolkata under the auspices of the Hugli River of Cultures Project (referred to henceforth as 'the Project').
The Project is funded by the UK's Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy's Newton Fund with additional funding from the Indian Council for Historical Research. The money supporting this project from 2018 to 2020 is delivered under the Global Challenges Research Fund in the stream Cultural Heritage and Rapid Urban Change and administered by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Publications
Chandernagore mon amour
Antara Mukherjee (Ed.) Chandernagore mon amour: the Citadel of the Moon (Liverpool: Liverpool University, 2018), 259 pp.
This bilingual English/Bengali collection of essays by project members and invited specialists provides new interpretations of Chandernagore's tangible built heritage, and its intangible cultural heritage from pre-colonial, through colonial and onto post-colonial times. The book is richly illustrated with original colour and black & white photographs and contains a timeline and links to digital resources such as photostories.
Reverberations
Pritimoy Das (Dir.) Reverberations: Voices from the Riverfront (Liverpool University, 2019), 34mins <https://youtu.be/ASshitTbEgA >
A documentary about the impact of the Hugli River of Cultures project on the local residents and the people who came in contact with the project. It's about what they think about the heritage of the riverfront towns, about what they think about our work, about the reverbs that need to be heard...