Nathaniel Brunt, Ph.D.

/ Yazidi Digital Vernacular Archives and the Ethics of Memory: Visual Culture, Conflict, and Civic Transformation in Lower Saxony & Iraq

This project investigates how community-based photographic archives from Yazidi communities in Lower Saxony and Iraq can be ethically digitized, preserved, and mobilized to strengthen democratic participation and pluralism. Building on Dr. Nathaniel Brunt’s ongoing work with Yazidi communities through The Sersal Project, as well as his background in documentary photography, the research combines archival inquiry, community engagement, and collaborative infrastructure planning with TIB Hannover’s Open Science Lab. Working within a postcustodial framework, the project aims to co-develop practical guidelines for at-risk vernacular visual collections, produce scholarly and creative outputs, and establish transnational partnerships that support accountability, rights claims, and inclusive historical memory.

The project engages critical debates in visual culture, archival theory, and digital heritage concerning the political work of images and the ethics of memory. Following Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s argument that archives are not passive repositories but active sites in which citizenship and rights are negotiated, the research approaches vernacular photographic archives as arenas of civic claim-making and democratic visibility. Brunt’s experience documenting and researching conflict and mass violence informs this approach, demonstrating how photographic archives can become urgent political tools for communities confronting cultural erasure in the aftermath of genocide and displacement. In contexts where civil and human rights are routinely threatened, digital archival work can function as a form of political action by fostering social inclusion, challenging dominant narratives, and creating deterritorialized civic spaces that support pluralistic futures.

Lower Saxony, home to the largest Yazidi community outside Iraq, offers a particularly significant setting for this work. Its position creates distinctive opportunities for transnational collaboration among community stakeholders, research infrastructures, and public institutions. In this context, the project situates community-held photographs as active resources through which belonging, recognition, and accountability may be negotiated across borders.