Introducing EMANDULO

EMANDULO is an experimental digital research tool that forms part of the larger Five Hundred Year Archive (FHYA) project. The FHYA is a project of the NRF chair in Archive and Public Culture based in the Historical Studies department at the University of Cape Town. The project seeks to stimulate engagement with the neglected areas of the southern African past before the advent of European colonialism. The FHYA project currently consists of two experimental digital research tools, the 500 Year Archive, available at www.fhya.org, and EMANDULO.

EMANDULO is devised to support archival enquiry, to promote curatorial experimentation, and to build a public community of users interested in how history was shaped and made in southern Africa. The site has been launched using sample materials concerning the area that is today KwaZulu-Natal and Swaziland but is designed to expand outwards from this narrow geographic focus and to include materials from across the region. Material on EMANDULO is organised in three categories: archival curations, presentations and depots.

The EMANDULO archival curations convene diverse selections of materials online including, amongst other things, texts, images, recordings, excavated items and botanical material, as well as early vernacular publications. The materials are drawn from local and international institutions and from personal collections. The site also provides records pertinent to the collection and custodial histories of these materials. In this way it foregrounds the processes across time that have shaped the archival material. The material has been organised and presented in ways make it readily searchable. This creates opportunities for researchers to step beyond long established institutional categories and disciplinary conventions and make new connections between diverse materials.

The EMANDULO presentations are curatorial interventions commissioned by the FHYA, ranging from creative musical compositions to bibliographic projects, that are presented online. Covering a wide range of topics, they are all related in one or another way to the archival items on EMANDULO and contain links back to those items in the EMANDULO archival curations.

Users are encouraged to participate in growing the EMANDULO knowledge base by sharing their findings and by adding additional information and resources to the site. You can do this by creating a profile, adding commentary, annotations, translations and information, and you can upload any items you consider useful to share with this community.