Archiving a Muslim History of Oxford: Approaches to Community History

In November 2020, the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford began the work of growing a new ‘community history’ initiative, to strengthen the Faculty’s relationships with local historians and community groups throughout Oxford and Oxfordshire. Amongst its pilot projects was ‘A Muslim History of Oxford’, in partnership with the Everyday Muslim Heritage and Archive Initiative. 

The project, which will create a digital archive collection of original oral history interviews and materials related to Oxford’s Muslim histories, aims to re-assess social histories of modern Britain by capturing lesser-known experiences of migration, family, community, activism and labour amongst Oxford’s Muslims from the late 19th century to the present. Central to this is community-led co-productive approaches, to ensure the collection embodies a diversity of Muslim experiences along race, class, gender and generational lines. The ethical and intellectual challenges of creating an archive which centres minoritised religious histories has resulted in the project team engaging with the following questions: Is it possible to write a community history without obscuring individual experiences? In addition, in what ways can our curatorial decisions refine existing historiographies of religion in modern Britain? 

Using the case study of the ‘A Muslim History of Oxford’ project, this paper will detail the methodological challenges of researching British-Muslim histories, and the significance of community-centred research in unveiling lesser-known social histories of modern Britain which centre everyday Muslim experiences. In addition, this paper will draw on items in the collection to showcase some of the project’s key findings, ranging from the transient settlement of students and scholars to the long, embedded and multigenerational histories of working-class families that settled in East Oxford. 

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