Call for Contribution:
We are in the planning phase to establish a documentation center to record the history of Mosul, its environs, and diverse communities. This effort is open thematically and chronologically and aims to develop a database of Oral Histories. The first comprehensive project of its kind for this area. It will be a place of exchange for local and international expertise in this field.
The archives (which include the recorded testimonies as well as the data we’ve been collecting from residents, which provides for private collections of videos, photos, documents, and other archival materials spanning over a century) will be accessible to scholars from diverse fields of study, including but not limited to cultural heritage, space, time, and people.
We’ve secured an agreement with the Mosul University Central Library to host and store the recordings in accordance with international academic codes of ethics.
As we develop this project, we’d like to reach out to potential individuals, as well as public and private entities, that might be able to support the creation, development, and sustainability of the documentation center – its audiovisual recording studio – in Old Mosul. It is important to note that Mosul has never had such a center before, nor has anyone worked on its Oral History. Ours is the first such project. This centre will also create a new field for young professionals in Iraq to develop their capacities for the future.
We have recently finished documenting the oral history of the Jewish community of Mosul and now we’ll start full-scale efforts to document all of Mosul’s communities, urban, rural, Nineveh Plains, Sinjar, and other areas of Nineveh. Testimonies will be given in the dialects of the native languages of the regions of interest including Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen, Hebrew, Syriac, Aramaic, and other languages.
The support can include human capital, equipment, training programs and digital resources, as well as direct funding.
Should you, a scholar or an institute you know be interested, please do contact me directly.
Omar at mosul-eye dot org
About Mosul Eye:
An organization registered in France and Iraq.
Mosul Eye Association is made up of civil activists from the city and its surrounding towns—students, recent graduates and young professionals who have taken it as their aim to support the holistic recovery of their war-ravaged city in concrete ways as well as the healing of its communities. The association’s members, eager young men and women, have organized concerts, heritage events, exhibitions, workshops, and now climate action events. The association is especially keen to develop new kinds of international collaboration and innovations in development and humanitarian programming that are inclusive and sustainable. The Mosul Eye Association is also focused on building institutional and academic partnerships for scholarly work on issues of identity, memory, history, migration and more pertaining to Mosul and beyond.
Mosul Eye 