Leen Amarin
DARE Project: Mobilizing the Past to Build a Better Future - Peoples’ Global Action Oral History
Program(s) of Study: Human Rights and Equity Studies
Project Supervisor: Lesley Wood
By building and launching a publicly accessible digital archive of interviews with activists with first-hand knowledge and experience in grassroots movements around the world, we hope to provide a resource that activists and scholars alike can turn to and leverage in times of challenge, strategy, and reflection.
Project Description:
This research project will allow contemporary social justice movements and researchers to better understand the global history of the global justice movement, and the strengths and challenges of a decentralized, grassroots model of building international networks among diverse movements. It will assist a team in building and launching a digital archive of interviews with activists around the world. Peoples’ Global Action (PGA) was an international network of social movements in the Global South and Global North which used direct action in order to challenge neoliberalism, free trade, and capitalism. PGAs legacy continues, but the peak of its activity occurred between 1998-2005. https://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/en/ PGA played a key role in the global justice movement and its model of decentralized direct action continues to be influential on contemporary struggle. Over the past five years, activists and scholars involved in this oral history project have collected over 40 interviews, in five languages with those involved in PGA. In order to make this material relevant for today's activists, the material must be cleaned, a useable online digital archive developed (underway); and shared with 21st century movements. The team aims to publicly launch the archive by late summer of 2023.The Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) – Undergraduate enables our students to meaningfully engage in research projects supervised by LA&PS faculty members. Find out more about DARE.