Intimate Excavations: Emotional Archaeology as Research Method

Inspired by the autoethnographic method, I’m reaching out personally to invite you to join Intimate Excavations: Emotional Archaeology as Research Method, my second course at CILAS.

This course stands independently, but grows organically from my earlier offering, Performing Stories with Neo-Dastangoi. Where that course used storytelling and performance to animate political memory in urban space, this one turns inward — toward a more intimate, research-driven engagement with place, emotion, and the archive.

Emotional Archaeology is a methodology I’ve been developing since my postgraduate work.

It weaves together phenomenology, aesthetic analysis, digital culture, and autoethnography to explore overlooked or everyday spaces as repositories of lived memory. The aim is not only to study archives— whether physical, oral, spatial, or digital— but to ask how they feel upon encounter, and what they ask of us in return. This 8-week seminar-practicum introduces Emotional Archaeology as a way of thinking and researching that centres emotional literacy, ethical presence, and Practice-as-Research. Participants will learn to approach archives— from community libraries and personal collections to online blogs and cultural maps— as dynamic sites where memory, identity, and meaning accumulate and shift.

We’ll be asking: How do objects and spaces hold emotion? How do we document what is felt, not just what is found? What kinds of knowledge lie outside institutional archives? Can a researcher be both implicated and rigorous?

Drawing inspiration from grassroots initiatives like the Hazrat Shah Wali Ullah Library in Delhi, and parallel efforts in Cairo, we’ll explore how archives rooted in community often tell deeper, more plural stories than those housed in institutions.

Sessions will combine theory, fieldwork (on- and offline), and creative documentation. Our digital classroom— bridging India and Egypt— will serve as both a site of learning and a space of shared excavation. Each participant will develop a Practice-as-Research project draft that reflects their own methodology, potentially culminating in a multimedia piece that captures the relationship between artefact, space, and emotion.

Whether you're a researcher, artist, or simply curious about how we remember and record meaning, this course invites you to slow down, feel deeply, and rethink what counts as knowledge.

I look forward to the possibility of thinking, feeling, and researching together.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to: Apply phenomenological and emotional archaeology frameworks to the study of cultural memory, spatial experience, and archival research. Employ autoethnographic and aesthetic strategies to engage with archival spaces in ways that are inclusive, reflective, and grounded in lived experience. Critically examine intercultural and syncretic narratives within grassroots and community-driven archives, especially those underrepresented in institutional memory. Conduct fieldwork using a hybrid methodology that integrates community knowledge, creative inquiry, and academic rigour. Produce original Practice-as-Research outputs that combine textual, visual, and performative modes to document the affective life of archives and spaces. Contribute to experimental, decolonial forms of knowledge-making that centre sensory experience, emotional literacy, and ethical engagement.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, participants will be able to: 1. Apply phenomenological and emotional archaeology frameworks to the analysis of cultural memory, space, and archival practice using tools such as Experience Logs, e.tc. 2. Engage in autoethnographic research by drawing on personal experience, affect, and embodied memory to inform scholarly and creative inquiry using tools like Specimen Folders, e.t.c. 3. Critically interpret grassroots and community-based archives, with attention to their intercultural, syncretic, and political dimensions, using tools like Observation Sketchbooks, e.t.c. 4. Design and conduct field-based research using hybrid methodologies that integrate academic rigour with community knowledge and creative modes of documentation, using tools like Analytical Classification Tables, e.t.c. 5. Produce Practice-as-Research outputs that synthesise theory, fieldwork, and artistic expression across textual, visual, and performative forms using methodological praxis frameworks such as Neo-Dastangoi, e.t.c. 6. Demonstrate emotional and ethical literacy in research encounters, especially in contexts involving intimate, marginal, or overlooked cultural spaces. 7. Contribute to decolonial and community-rooted modes of knowledge-making, challenging dominant narratives through sensory, inclusive, and situated methodologies.