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Modern Endangered Archives Programme (MEAP)

The Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) is a UCLA Library granting program funded by The Arcadia Fund. We aim to digitize and make accessible endangered archival materials from the 20th and 21st Centuries, including print, photographic, film, audio, ephemeral, and born digital objects.

MEAP is dedicated to:

  • Providing open access to cultural and historical materials from around the world as a challenge to politicized and nationalized historical narratives that minimize or silence multiple voices and perspectives.
  • Enabling digital preservation of at-risk cultural heritage from parts of the world with limited resources for archival preservation.

  • Expanding the capacity for digital preservation around the world and building a culture of open access that can continue after the period of the grant.


Modern Endangered Archives Program was formerly Documenting Global Voices. All funds will be distributed under Modern Endangered Archives Program.

Funder Website

Modern Endangered Archives Programme (MEAP) Projects

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The sound archives of Radio Rurale de Kayes (Mali), 1988-2010

Before Radio Rurale de Kayes (RRK), Malian radio production was limited to the national radio under authoritarian rule, mostly broadcast in French and Bamanankan. But since th…

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3 0062 rz

Memory and Identity of Afro Brazilian Archives

The Soweto Black Organization collection has focused on Black agency in Brazilian history, documenting grassroots activism and the transnational consequences for democracy. Th…

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3 0061

Queering Polish Memory

Gdańsk’s Initiative has recorded political and social changes throughout the emergence of queer activism in Poland, a very under-documented historical movement. This project a…

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MEAP UCLA

Endangered Archives from Sufi Shrines of the Afghan-Pakistan Frontier

The Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier region has served as the site of some of South Asia's most enriched spiritual movements. Sufi monastery archives show the persistent spiritua…

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3 0059

The Biblioteca Amazónica: History and Politics between the Forest and City

The city of Iquitos is a cultural, economic, and political center of the Peruvian Amazon. The Biblioteca Amazónica contains invaluable historical documentation and photographs…

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3 0058 rz

Ustadh Mau Swahili Muslim Library

The Ustadh Mau collection in Lamu, Kenya holds treasured Swahili ajami knowledge and historical memories that have documented coastal identity and values. This project works t…

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3 0056

Afro-Indigenous Brazil struggles for recognition: Videos & Photos 1980-2000

This archive has documented the resurgence of Brazil's Afro-Indigenous movements from the 1980's to the 2000's, following nearly 20 years of military dictatorship. These mater…

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MEAP UCLA

Recovering Pablo Salas' Visual Archive on the Chilean Dictatorship

Cameraman Pablo Salas captured the popular mobilization and growing political resistance during the Pinochet dictatorship. While other records can somewhat reconstruct this hi…

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MEAP UCLA

Visualizing Memory: Indigenous Resistance in Chiapas, Mexico 1998-2009

The Chiapas Media Project/Promedios archive holds nearly 200 hours worth of documentary and interview footage capturing the struggles of southern Mexico's indigenous populatio…

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