AHRC impact funding: Archiving COVID-19 Heritage in Ho Chi Minh City

An £11,888 grant from the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Impact Acceleration Account (distributed by UEA) will increase and hasten public engagement in Vietnam with research data collected in 2022 under an AHRC/GCRF funded project, 'Archiving COVID-19 Heritage in Ho Chi Minh City'.

Funding will be used to hire a Vietnamese web manager who will add multiple features to the existing project website and to hire a Vietnamese social media/SEO specialist to increase engagement with the project’s Instagram archive, thereby opening up new opportunities for local research users to engage with the project's existing visual and textual data on COVID-19 in Ho Chi Minh City and submit their own. The social media/SEO specialist will target potential participants able to compare the ‘Vietnam War’ or the post war subsidy period of hardship with the extraordinary COVID-19 period.

An in-person exhibition is also funded through this grant. Citizen archivists – people who have added content to our Instagram and website during the project – and others will be invited to the exhibition to debate key themes. A videographer and photographer will record visitor testimonials there then share curated content on the project website.

Capitalising on the opportunity for project findings to be shared at well-attended knowledge exchange events around the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the 'fall of Saigon', the grant also funds PI travel to Ho Chi Minh City in 2025.