Community Conversations: A Digitized Cultural Preservation Project in the United States Virgin Islands

FAIN: HAA-290389-23

University of the Virgin Islands (Charlotte Amalie, VI 00802-6004)
Thalassa Tonks (Project Director: June 2022 to present)
Molly Perry (Co Project Director: June 2022 to present)

The planning and development of a digital archive of oral histories of community members, built by faculty and students at the University of the Virgin Islands.

This project will engage University of the Virgin Islands students in Service Learning by training them in best practices of oral history research, collection, preservation, public engagement and linguistic practices, awareness, and recording. Oral history collection develops students’ critical communication capacities and analytical skills, while also helping to preserve the rich history, languages, and cultures of the Virgin Islands community. This funding will enable a team of UVI faculty members to continue to train and engage a young generation to contribute meaningfully to humanities projects on St. Croix, St. John, St. Thomas, and Water Island. This grant will allow students to further contribute to the preservation of these stories by transcribing and editing the videos to be uploaded into an online public access website, so that other researchers around the world gain appreciation for the history and cultures of the US Virgin Islands.