Dharini Chand (she/her) is an archivist based in Mumbai, India.

As someone who has always been inclined towards listening and observing, Dharini greatly appreciates the unique life stories people have. She sees them as an immense, untapped source of knowledge that needs to be timely and safely recorded. She regularly finds herself using the voice recorder app on her phone to record stories from people around her. Though an amateur attempt, her findings formed the base for some of her research work at college and have been instrumental in motivating her towards seeking a focused academic understanding of oral history.

Dharini has received a B.A. with a double major in History and Psychology from Sophia College, Mumbai and a M.A. in Ancient Indian Culture from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Alongside her M.A., she began working at Cipla Archives where she discovered her love for archiving. Her primary role of building and managing a personal archive gave her the opportunity to explore life stories in a new way - through archival objects. In her six years of work, she has closely seen how the intersection of archival objects and oral history brings about a fuller picture that would have otherwise been missed. She wants to further explore this, as well as the intersection of narrative inquiry and oral history through her future research work.

Dharini’s goal through oral history is simply ‘ask before you can’t’. She broadly identifies her research interests as - stories which garner interest, stories which garner thought and stories which garner change. She looks forward to first building a solid theoretical foundation in oral history and then exploring new ways to approach it.