Writing British Asian cities

This article reports in brief on an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) Diasporas, Migrations and Identities (DMI) programme funded network, ‘Writing British-Asian Cities’, which ran between 2006 and 2009. It contends that the diverse local configuration of Asian Britain has to a large extent remained unexamined in the literature. Having organised community-based events in five English cities, an indication is given of how London's East End, Bradford, Manchester, Birmingham and Leicester have all been ‘written’ and represented across a variety of genres since the 1960s. Bringing the perspectives of the social sciences into conversation with the arts and humanities, the network also prioritised further reflection on certain disciplinary perspectives and cross-cutting themes: history; literary/cultural production; religion; gender. Various working papers and other resources which report in more detail on the project are lodged on an interactive website, while a research group of the British Association of South Asian Studies (BASAS) has also been recently established.