UBC iSchool is excited to announce that Dual MASLIS student Isabel Carlin has received a 2021-2022 SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship (Master’s) for their application “Imagined Resistance: Imagined Records and Indigenous Intergenerational Memory“. Using archival theories of haunting and imagination, this project examines the imagined harp of Isabel’s Indigenous grandmother, which functions as a personal and political record in the northern Philippines.
What is archived and what is not archived in/about Indigenous communities in the northern Philippines? How does this parallel the absence of the imagined harp-as-record?
Political theories of haunting use ghosts which are materially absent but deeply felt, such as the sociological “ghost” of imperialism or the more literal ghost of an ancestor passed, to uncover the affective dimensions of political violence and oppression. Like haunting, imagined archival theory also reckons with political violence by surfacing human rights issues and desires for unattained perspectives and justice through imagined or impossible records. The political implications of this imagined harp as a record will be uncovered through participatory research based on Indigenous methodologies of relationality to understand this harp in the context of Indigenous political resistance against sustained state terror.
Building on the political activism and worldviews of Indigenous communities in the northern Philippines, theories of imagined archives, and the phenomenon of haunting, this project politicizes personal archival records and leverages archival theories to serve Indigenous intergenerational memory. This proposal also contributes to a history of Indigenous political resistance in the northern Philippines and offers a political intervention in critical archival theory.
Our warmest congratulations, Isabel!
About Isabel Carlin
Isabel is a second-year MASLIS student with a background in Indigenous Studies, French Studies, and History. Their research interests focus on Indigenous ways of knowing, sociological haunting, and political economy. Their proposed thesis work focuses on intergenerational recordkeeping practices in the northern Philippines.
About the SSHRC CGS-M
The objective of the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s (CGS M) Program is to help develop research skills and assist in the training of highly qualified personnel by supporting students who demonstrate a high standard of achievement in undergraduate and early graduate studies. The CGS M Program provides financial support to high-calibre scholars who are engaged in eligible master’s or, in some cases, doctoral programs in Canada.
