Part I: Living Archives: Indigenous Agency, Knowledge, and Digital Cultural Preservation in India
Time & Location
23 Jun 2026, 13:00 – 14:30 BST
Online
About the event
Join the Indigenous Studies Discussion Group (ISDG) for a two-part online panel series Digitalising Indigeneity in India: Preservation, Power, and Dispossession deliberating the relationship between indigeneity and digitality in the context of India.
Part I: Living Archives: Indigenous Agency, Knowledge, and Digital Cultural Preservation in India brings together three Indigenous scholars and practitioners to deliberate on Indigenous peoples as curators, (co-)administrators, and owners of their digital cultural heritage. Centring Indigenous agencies, this session foregrounds Indigenous communities as active and sovereign authors in the digitalisation processes.
Teams Link:
About the Speakers:
Sudhir John Horo
Sudhir John Horo, of the Munda people of Jharkhand, is a designer and indigenous knowledge practitioner whose work spans cultural diplomacy, public communication, and community-led knowledge systems. His early work contributed to shaping India’s global communication presence across platforms such as the World Economic Forum (Davos) and initiatives including INDIA: Future of Change and INDIAFRICA: A Shared Future, a Government of India initiative engaging 54 African countries through culture, design, and youth exchange.
His current work focuses on indigenous knowledge, epistemology and community-led design practices through Epistemic Design Labs with tribal communities in India. He is the founder of the Tribal Design Forum, India’s only network of tribal designers and professionals. He also serves as Trustee of the Bhasha Research and Publication Centre and Honorary Director of the Adivasi Academy, a tribal-led, tribal-managed institution working on indigenous knowledge, language and culture.
Monali Longmailai
Dr. Monali Longmailai is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics, Assam University, Silchar. She was formerly an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Endangered Languages, Tezpur University from 2016 to 2020. She has researched on several languages of northeast India, including Dimasa, Biate, Hrangkhol, Western Rengma, Deori, to name a few. Her areas of research are Tibeto-Burman languages, language documentation and archiving, morphosyntax, areal linguistics and language typology. She has authored and edited several books among which Under-Documented Languages of Northeast India and Beyond, Questionnaire for Creating Cultural Dictionary and The ABC of Dimasa Cultural Heritage: An Illustrative Primer are the recent publications in 2025 and Linguistic Heritage of North-East India: An Exploration of Lesser Known Languages in 2026. In addition, Dr Longmailai has undertaken an ICSSR sponsored Major Research Project on Digital Archiving of Dimasa Linguistic and Cultural Heritage from 2023 to 2025. She is presently the Dimasa Coordinator for the community based digital archive “Bodo and Dimasa Heritage Digital Archive.”
Rahi Soren
Rahi Soren is currently an Assistant Professor at the School of Oceanographic Studies, Jadavpur University. She is interested in understanding the effective use of scientific information for conserving culture, habitat and biodiversity in the face of the growing threats of extinction. Alongside her scientific work, she engages with indigenous culture and actively participates in the documentation and preservation of the endangered cultural heritage. Her works include Mapping Traditional Santali Songs (funded by RUSA 2.0) as well as Locating and Digitizing early Santali periodicals in India and Bangladesh (funded by Endangered Archives programme, British Library), hosted at the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University. She also engages in projects as ‘Building Connections to Decolonise the Curriculum’ - a Collaborative Project between Jadavpur University and the University of Exeter and 'Redefining Cultural Heritage' in collaboration with University of Liverpool.
Moderator:
Mrinalini Raj
Mrinalini Raj has submitted her PhD thesis on the literary representations of Adivasi women at IIT Roorkee, India. Her PhD has been supported by the Charles Wallace Scholarship and the UGC-Junior and Senior Research Fellowships. She is an Associate Fellow at the University of Groningen. Mrinalini is also a translator, translating the literary works of Adivasi authors into English. She employs archival research, Indigenous methods, and spatial epistemology to analyse contemporary works by Adivasi and non-Adivasi writers. Her research writings have appeared in journals such as AlterNative, the Journal of Gender Studies, and the Journal of International Women’s Studies, among others.