ln repressive regimes, the empirical study of political violence (its mechanisms, effects, origins and everyday experiences) is often impossible. The imposed gap in knowledge directly impacts the understanding of societies that are built on this history of violence. How can we build this knowledge without access to the field? Based on the case of Iran, our project seeks an answer to this question in the age of global circulation and the Internet. The project gathers under the form of a digital portal that preserves, links, and makes accessible already existing primary-source materials related to the lranian revolution and nation-state formation in the years 1979-1989. lt brings together disseminated documents and private archives across the world, opening the way for further research.
Liberation from the past cannot be attained by forgetting it, but by knowing how our lives have been shaped by it.
Our objectives:
• produce knowledge about the Iranian revolution through a decade, and experiment methods for writing its (hi)stories
• inventory the existing sources and orient private/individual archives towards safe repositories
Our method:
• Research on off-site inquiries on State violence: international comparisons, through workshops and publications
• A public portal dedicated to the ‘counter-archives’ of post-revolution Iran
• A network of experts and contributors
• Expertise in secure digital archiving and preservation
Off-Site draws together a team of international specialists in a broad range of fields (anthropology, film, lranian studies, education, archivai science, digital preservation). The project (2019-2026) is supported by the European Research Council (ERC), a research agency dedicated to the advancement of scientific knowledge across disciplines (research on cancer, neuroscience, linguistics, history, etc.). The project is hosted by the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. The partner institutions are public institutions of higher education.
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