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Traces of South Asia

An ongoing project that seeks to foreground some of the stories in our archives and special collections that speak about South Asia.

By South Asia we mean any items in the Library’s archives and special collections that are about or created by people or organisations that have a relationship to the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Find out more about the Traces of South Asia project and how to get involved.

Recent news

  • We've lent some archives to a new exhibition at SOAS relating to the role of LSE alumni in authoring the India constitution. Open until 20 September 2025, check out  After the Assembly: Constituting India
  • For South Asian Heritage Month 2025 we hosted a wonderful interactive workshop with True Forms; a unique archive of more than 3,000 South Asia vinyl records. We displayed our archives of Mukti and She magazine; both available online from our South Asian Heritage collection.
  • We’re delighted to see the launch of Remaking Britain, a digital resource which explores South Asian Connections and Networks, featuring some of our collections.

Resource guides

Digitised material

  • Front cover of She magazine featuring a woman's face.

    View a growing collection of digitised material from our archives relating to South Asia. Includes copies of the journal Mukti and She, as well as All Pakistan Women’s Association Newsletter. More to come!

    View the South Asia Heritage collection

Visitors and research case studies

We love having visitors come to our archives and we learn a lot from them. Here's a list of some the people that have engaged with our South Asia collections.

Have you used the South Asia collections at LSE Library? We’d love to hear from you and share your research here!

Online exhibitions

The project begins with a series of online exhibitions.

Exhibitions

  • An exhibition poster.

    In 2017 LSE Library curated an exhibition in partnership with LSE South Asia Centre called Journeys to Independence: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh”. You can listen to a podcast related to the event and see more on our past exhibitions webpage.

Video talks

Blog posts

Further information

Acknowledgements

Lead photograph at the top of this webpage is from the archives of Neville Sandelson MP, on a visit to Pakistan and Afghanistan with Lord Cranborne, SANDELSON/12/21.

Many people have supported us at the beginning of this project for which we are thankful. We would particularly like to thank Dr. Nilanjan Sarkar for his tireless expertise, kindness and support on this and related projects.