Iqbal Singh

About

Iqbal is part of the Outreach Team. He has led on a number of ground breaking research-led public engagement projects, including the 1919 Riots, South Asia and the First World War, Colonial Seafarers in the 1920s, Indian Indenture, The Irish War of Independence, The Partition of British India and Windrush 75.

He now leads a pioneering practice-based research programme exploring with diasporic communities in the UK, complex and nuanced readings of Britain's colonial and imperial past. His methodological approach includes mixing archival research with therapeutic thinking and utilising creative practice.

Research activity

Iqbal Singh is a historian with a research specialism in mobility control of colonial seafarers in late Imperial Britain. He has a more general interest in records from our collection relating to South Asia and the First and Second World Wars, the Partition of British India and Indian Indenture.

In 2022 he published with UCL Press an article on a project he led for The National Archives in 2016-7 on South Asia and the First World War, Loyalty and Dissent. This project paved the way for many more similar collaborations which to date have led to the production of no fewer than 24 audio dramas that use The National Archives records collection to explore with diasporic communities in the UK complex and nuanced readings of Britain’s colonial and imperial past.

In 2022 he commissioned a report aimed at developing a methodology based on his collaborative projects which helped distil the key techniques that could be used for facilitating group work around emotionally or challenging material.