Life Histories
First-person recollections of family, childhood, work, migration, community life and change.
PlannedOral Histories
A growing space for community memory and recorded knowledge. The Naath Foundation collection is still being assembled; this page clearly separates our developing holdings from external archival and research resources.
● Collection in progress
NAATH FOUNDATION COLLECTION
Building the collection carefully
Existing recorded conversations — including material that may later be reviewed from community sessions — will only be published after appropriate review for relevance, speaker permission, context, attribution and access level.
1
Review
Identify culturally or historically valuable segments.
2
Permission
Confirm whether publication and attribution are appropriate.
3
Describe
Add speaker, date, place, topic, language and context where known.
4
Preserve
Assign access status and retain the recording with its metadata.
FUTURE COLLECTION PATHWAYS
What this archive can grow into
Cattle-Camp Heritage
Recorded knowledge and lived experience, documented with speaker context rather than assumed or invented descriptions.
PlannedSongs & Performance
Recordings may be catalogued with performer, language, place, date and rights information where available.
PlannedFolktales & Storytelling
Community-contributed stories with clear attribution and, where possible, audio and transcript.
PlannedCommunity Memory
Accounts of places, events and social change, distinguished from independently corroborated historical claims.
PlannedElders & Knowledge Holders
Long-form conversations that preserve personal experience and knowledge with informed participation.
PlannedEXTERNAL ARCHIVES & RESEARCH
Discover Nuer material held elsewhere
These records point visitors to the institutions that host the original material. Naath Foundation does not claim ownership of these external collections.
Historical field notes
View at Indiana University ↗Indiana University — Nuer Field Notes Project
Linguistic field notes associated with Eleanor Vandevort’s work in South Sudan, including Nuer language notes, grammar and related materials. The project was created to preserve and provide access to the collection.
Recorded language
Explore the dataset ↗University of Edinburgh — Nuer Collection
A research dataset recorded between 2015 and 2019 with Lou Nuer speakers, focused on phonetics, phonology and verb morphology. Most data was collected with diaspora speakers in Greater Nairobi.
Current research
Visit project ↗RECORDS — Remote Nuer Dialect Documentation
A 2025–2028 Surrey Morphology Group project using remote, offline-first methods to document dialect variation, with Nuer as its pilot case study.
CONTRIBUTE
Discuss a ContributionYour story can become part of the archive
Community members may contact Naath Foundation about interviews, recordings, photographs, manuscripts or contextual information. Submission does not automatically mean public publication; access and rights should be discussed first.