Work

A people’s archive of food memories: Oral histories from India in pandemic times

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: In spring 2020, we faced a challenge of completing oral interviews on changing food cultures in India’s capital, Delhi, in a context of political upheaval and the Covid-19 pandemic. Our response was to conceive a ‘People’s Archive of Food Memories’ – by which ‘student ethnographers’ from a local college were recruited and trained online to gather oral histories at home from family members in lockdown. The focus here is methodological, emphasising opportunities and challenges of this improvised approach in terms of the interview sample, trust and intimacy, research outputs and the families involved. Defining the archive are migrant food histories that come alive through an attention to cooking and eating, not just as subsistence, but as sensuality, pleasure, caring and belonging.

Source: White Rose Research Online (University of Leeds, The University of Sheffield, University of York)

Authors: Lambert-Hurley, S., Gupta, S.

Institutions: University of Sheffield, University of Delhi, University of Leeds

Language: English

Topic: Oral History, Memory, Narrative Analysis

Subfield: History

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: Leverhulme Trust, University of Delhi, Arts and Humanities Research Council

Award: Forgotten Food: Culinary Memory, Local Heritage and Lost Agricultural Varieties in India

OpenAlex ID: W7112187282