An international academic project focused on preserving Ezidi photographic and cultural heritage is expanding through a research fellowship in Germany.
According to the University of Victoria Libraries, Nathaniel Brunt, an interdisciplinary scholar, documentary photographer and VPRI Aspiration 2030 Postdoctoral Fellow, has taken up a residency at the Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology in Hannover, Germany. The institution, known as TIB Hannover, is described by UVic as a major European centre for open science research and infrastructure.
Brunt was awarded the 2026 Hannah Arendt Fellowship by the German state of Lower Saxony, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation. During the fellowship, he is expanding the SERSAL Project, an international initiative dedicated to digitally preserving the photographic and cultural heritage of Iraq’s Ezidi people.
The project includes fieldwork with Ezidis in Lower Saxony, a German state that is home to a large Ezidi diaspora. It also focuses on open and sustainable software solutions for safeguarding cultural heritage in the aftermath of conflict.
The new fellowship builds on Brunt’s wider work at the University of Victoria. In 2024, UVic News reported that he was developing the Conflict Aftermath Digital Archive Project, which aims to preserve at-risk visual material in conflict and post-conflict contexts. His work with Ezidis includes professional visual documentation as well as family photographs, oral histories, mobile phone images and videos. Preserving photographs, oral histories and everyday records helps protect the history of Ezidi families, villages, traditions and the Sharfadin faith.
About the SERSAL Project
The SERSAL Project is an international, non-partisan collaborative initiative dedicated to digitally preserving, centralising and making accessible the photographic and cultural heritage of Iraq’s Ezidi people. Founded in 2024, the project was created by an interdisciplinary team from Iraq, Spain, the United States, the Netherlands and Canada, bringing together academics, designers, architects, journalists, researchers, librarians, documentarians and Ezidi contributors in Iraq.
