BORDER CROSSINGS: Exploring history and community through virtual reality at the 75th anniversary of the Partition

边境口岸项目旨在以AHRC过去资助的项目为基础，开展与独立和分治75周年相关的影响和参与活动。最初的大型项目“性别、种姓和宗教认同习俗”(项目编号：AH/F009143/1，PI：Navtej Purewal)于2010年完成，由宗教和社会方案资助。虽然该项目产生了一些学术和创造性成果，但其影响和参与活动主要集中在南亚。这项提议旨在将原始项目的发现和贡献推广到英国的观众，特别是散居国外的南亚人。通过对当代旁遮普邦宗教习俗的研究，2010年的项目强调了使宗教差异的历史逻辑复杂化的必要性。这种逻辑在很大程度上植根于对1947年分治的记忆和公共叙事，并开发了新的方法来理解宗教和民族认同的僵化观念和类别不断被断言和重建的机制。当前的项目利用这些洞察力和方法来研究1947年分治的记忆和公共叙事是如何在散居海外的英国人中随着时间的推移而发展和变化的。这个后续项目还将探索如何利用虚拟现实(VR)技术的新发展来进一步洞察2010年项目的主张，即跨越身份的边界思维可以使对过去的批判性重新审视成为可能。与Dastaan项目的合作使研究团队能够探索如何使用身临其境的VR体验来传播2010年项目的关键方法发现，同时也有助于扩展和扩大作为英国南亚侨民社区文化遗产的一个重要主题的分区被纪念、纪念和纪念的方式。该项目有四个主要目标：1.反思和鼓励对话，探讨南亚和联合王国在独立75周年前几十年来纪念、纪念和纪念分治的方式的变化，并更好地了解将这两个地点/空间的纪念活动联系起来的流程和过程。与利益相关者社区合作，分享关于南亚裔英国侨民和更广泛的英国社会中不同社区和几代人对分治的理解的知识。探索如何使用虚拟现实和视觉媒体来促进关于分割、独立及其遗产的新的跨世代和跨社区的对话。制作学习资源，使有关1947年及其在南亚和英国的遗产的教学更具批判性和包容性。

The Border Crossings project aims to build on from a past AHRC-funded project in order to deliver impact and engagement activities associated with the 75th anniversary of independence and the partition. The original large project "Gender, Caste and the Practices of Religious Identities (Project reference: AH/F009143/1, PI: Navtej Purewal) completed in 2010, was funded under the Religion and Society programme. While there were a number of academic and creative outputs from that project, the impacts and engagement activities were mainly focused in South Asia. This proposal aims to extend the findings and contributions of the original project to audiences in the UK, particularly the South Asian diaspora. Through a study of religious practices in contemporary Punjab, the 2010 project emphasised the need to complicate historically embedded logics of religious difference. Such logics are heavily grounded in memories and public narratives of the partition of 1947 and developed new approaches for understanding the mechanisms through which rigid ideas and categories of religious, and national, identity are constantly being asserted and reconstructed. The current project draws on these insights and methodologies to examine how memories and public narratives of the partition of 1947 have developed and changed over time amongst the UK diaspora.This follow-on project will also explore how new developments in Virtual Reality (VR) technology can be used to contribute further insight to the 2010 project's claim that thinking across bordered ideas of identity can enable critical re-examinations of the past. The partnership with Project Dastaan enables the research team to explore how immersive VR experience can be used to disseminate the critical methodological findings of the 2010 project while also helping to extend and expand the ways in which the partition, as a significant theme of cultural heritage for South Asian diaspora communities in the UK, is commemorated, remembered and memorialised. The project has four key objectives:1. To reflect on and encourage dialogue about changes in the ways in which partition has been commemorated, remembered and memorialised in both South Asia and the UK in the decades before the 75th anniversary of independence and to better understand the flows and processes that connect memorialising across these two locations/spaces.2. To work with stakeholder communities to share knowledge of how understandings of partition vary across communities and generations in the South Asian UK diaspora, and wider British society.3. To explore how VR and visual media can be used to facilitate new cross-generational and cross-community conversations about partition, independence and their legacy.4. To produce learning resources that can enable more critical and inclusive teaching about 1947 and its legacies in South Asia and the UK.