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.