Many memory institutions across Europe contain holdings connected with its colonial past which for many years has been a focus of contestation from both communities of origin, ethnic minorities and civil society at large. At the same time challenging questions are being asked by professionals in the field as to what to do with this problematic cultural heritage, from returning items when appropriate, to rewriting the historical context surrounding them in a more critical and inclusive way. This project aims to identify key instances of colonial audio-visual heritage across the three archives involved, draw a common map of shared racialised representations connected with their respective imperial contexts, identify problematic visualisation and language and open up a dialogue between the archives and a variety of users, including archivists, researchers, filmmakers, and grassroots organisations. The digitised colonial audio-visual heritage is provided by three national archives: The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, the French Institut national de l'audiovisuel and Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, UK. All these archives have a rich collection of original film and sound, some of it produced at the height of empire, ranging from ethnographers' footage for 'educational' purposes to more direct propaganda films to bolster colonial ideologies. We will explore how archival material created in a ‘colonial mindset’ can be re-appropriated and re-interpreted critically to become an effective source for the 'decolonization of the mind' and the basis for a future inclusive society. The overall outcome of PICCH is to engender a polyvocality that can be incorporated into the archive itself providing new ways to enter and explore the past via a contemporary interpretative frame. To this effect advanced technologies will be used to study how to bridge archival and contemporary languages, and to support transnational exploration of multiple archives via a single interactive user interface.

The LiPoL research program aims to exploit the potentialities of the edition of the Tale of Baybars (Presses de l'Ifpo, 2000-2020, 18 volumes) in order to give a new impetus to research about popular Levantine literature and about Middle Arabic, its dominant linguistic register. By relying on "popular culture and its linguistic, artistic and literary expressions" as a structuring theme, LiPoL brings together four French institutional partners, including an Institute for Research Abroad. It aims to create a new dynamic capable of accompanying the disciplinary evolution that Arab and Islamic studies will experience following the deep socio-political changes experienced by the countries of the Middle East since the beginning of 2010. Organized along four axes, Digital, Language, Society and Aesthetics, it brings together researchers in the different fields of Humanities, so as to study altogether the linguistic, literary, historical and cultural dimensions of the text. The program includes a major digital component: both the critical edition of the Tale and the handwritten notebooks of storytellers on which it relies (about 60 000 folios digitalized up to now) will be made available to the scientific community online in open access. Composed of over ten million characters, the Tell of Baybars is from far the largest Middle Arabic corpus ever published, so that it constitutes a unique object of research in the field of Arabic studies. By contributing to the safeguarding of an endangered heritage, this digital collection of manuscripts should serve as a basis for a Digital Library of Popular Levantine Literature which will be fed when new handwritten notebooks from the Near East are revealed. A collaborative work tool - which will be experimented during the first 24 months of the project - will allow researchers to submit translations or comments online, while participating in the editing of these manuscripts.

This project pertains to the interdisciplinary field of interdisciplinary research on the practices of breast-feeding. It has 2 complementary parts, one anthropological, the other biological and psychobiological. - The anthropological part aims to document the practices and representations related to neonatal C consumption - much less understood than those related to breastfeeding - in 7 different countries (Germany, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, France, Morocco), characterized by contrasting social and cultural contexts. The research includes 4 phases (P1-P4). P1/ (6 months): building and translation of 2 questionnaires into local language (for the mothers, and nursing staff) to be used in the 10 maternity hospitals selected in the 7 countries. In addition, an interview grid will be built up on the consumption of C for use by different fields covered by this research (in Arabic, Berber, English, German, Khmer, Mooré, Portuguese, Spanish). P2/ (18 months): The investigation itself, which will be conducted following 2 modalities by means of the documents which will have been elaborated during P1: a/ (2 months) Questionnaires will be passed in the maternity wards of Augsburg (Germany), Cochabamba (Bolivia), Fes (Morocco), Nice (France), Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) Pelotas (Brazil), and Phnom Penh (Cambodia) ; b/ (4 months) Ethnographic inquiries (observation and interviews). Access to informants will be through the mothers who have been subjected to the questionnaire and to whom we have asked for their consent. P3 (6 months): data processing and analysis of the results. P4 (6 months) Writing up and communication results. - The biological and psychobiological part of the project focuses on two aspects of the C. 1/ its sensory and functional properties (for adults, parents or not, and for newborns), which are largely unknown to date. This part will be run by the Ethology team of CSGA, Dijon (UMR 6265). 2/ to test the immunological potential of C and its effect in the field of respiratory and gut allergies, a series of experiments will be conducted on an animal model. This task will be carried out by the E.A. Immune Tolerance, Hospital L’Archet, Nice. Overall, the specificity of the project consists in: i)being completely dedicated to the very initial phase of human feeding: the ingestion of C ; ii)investigating cultural variables susceptible to explain consumption or not of C in the target countries; iii)raising anthropological and bio-cultural knowledge on the perception of an organic substance such as the C; iv)looking for the biological benefits of C for the prevention of allergic diseases; v)elaborating recommendations that could be useful for public health policies and educational initiatives in the target countries. Notably, expected results could increase the frequency of consumption of neonatal C, the positive effects of which are widely known for the health of the child.