Meryem Choukri, M.A.

This PhD project focuses on archives of Black women and women of colour movements in Germany. It investigates the question how historical awareness and archives are formed in activist movements that are constantly changing. While archives are commonly associated with the preservation of hegemonic knowledge in the form of records collections, this project will help to shape a better understanding of the question how archiving and transmitting of knowledge is done from a marginalised, resistant position.
Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, I will mainly draw from semi-structured interviews with Black women and women of colour activists from different generations. In analysing different forms of archives in the context of intersectional activism in Germany, such as community archives, literary archives, and social media archives, I will demonstrate how knowledge about present and past activism, intersectionality and racism is archived and passed on in Black women and women of colour movements. In doing so, I will also shed light on events, texts, individuals and other points of reference for the movements. The final chapter on archives of resistance will discuss the entanglements and various functions of the different archives and show how political activism and marginalised knowledge is organised in Black women and women of colour movements in Germany.