Welcome
Project Overview
This interdisciplinary project in creative arts investigates the shared cultural history of the people of Wales and the Khasi people of north east India. This history spans 170 years, from the arrival of the Welsh missionaries in the Khasi Hills in the 1840s, to the removal of all foreign missionaries from India in 1967, resulting in a complex body of transcultural material. The project uses creative arts practice -– performance, film and music – to construct a series of cultural dialogues between Welsh and Indian scholar-practitioners, dialogues that investigate and respond to our historical relationship.
The project staff are Professor Lisa Lewis, University of South Wales; Dr Aparna Sharma, University of California Los Angeles; Dr Helen Davies, University of South Wales; with special consultant Professor Desmond Kharmawphlang, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India; and Gareth Bonello, PhD student, University of South Wales (funded by Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol and Faculty of Creative Industries, University of South Wales).
The project staff are Professor Lisa Lewis, University of South Wales; Dr Aparna Sharma, University of California Los Angeles; Dr Helen Davies, University of South Wales; with special consultant Professor Desmond Kharmawphlang, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, India; and Gareth Bonello, PhD student, University of South Wales (funded by Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol and Faculty of Creative Industries, University of South Wales).
Research context
The Welsh-Khasi transcultural relationship is rooted in the missionary contact established in the mid-nineteenth century by the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist mission in the Khasi and Jaiñtia Hills, and the cultural processes that are a consequence of this interaction. Until the mission movement in this region came to an end in 1969 its representatives undertook extensive cultural production based on exchange with the local community, leaving behind a rich and complex body of literature and performance. Such materials include letters, hymns and folk-songs, religious writing, diaries, magazines, travel writing and films, photography, and poetry, most of it scattered between official and unofficial archives in north east India and Wales. This background provides the context for the construction of a series of ‘cultural dialogues’ conducted through creative arts practice, that provide spaces to investigate and respond to a series of research objectives.