Meet the Team
Volunteers
PATH was shaped by volunteer’s interests in heritage.
We could not have done it without them.
We thank every volunteer who has been involved in the project and shared their time and expertise during research, making outputs, public talks and organising events.
Priya Spencer
Elizabeth Spencer, also known as Priya, came to Aberdeen over a decade back and is settled here with her family.
A World War II veteran, her grandfather served in the Royal Indian Navy. With his tales of his time spent in the UK, he had motivated her. She would often hear her grandfather talk about the good old days after he had visited the area while on shore leave. He did, however, omit some significant details of his experiences as a member of a religious minority and a member of the Royal Navy. She wants to learn about people who have similar experiences to her and her grandfather to fill in the blanks. With a variety of experiences, including her own personal encounters with racism, prejudice, and solidarity, Priya is very eager to document this alternative history so that others can learn from it.
She hopes that this project helps the future generations to remember not just the mainstream stories, but Aberdeen’s fringe history hidden in plain sight of the population. Stories of people who were the cogs in Aberdeen’s workforce, as well.
Building on her current research, she hopes to pursue a legacy project that examines the wider participation of ethnic and religious minorities in Scotland.
She is forming a group in Aberdeen made up of members of racial and religious minorities. Additionally, they want to encourage more women to tell their stories and support the growth of minority ethnic women-owned companies, ventures, and ideas on a common platform.
Kindly get in touch to be part of the group on edi.livedexperiences@gmail.com
Priya interviewed people from ethnic and religious minorities.
To find out more about her research (link)
Jolanta Gajewska
Jolanta is deeply passionate and committed to advocating for social equality and aspires to become a researcher who actively combats the inequalities that exist in our societies. Her research interests are centred on the experiences and lives of ethnic minority women in Aberdeen during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (specifically, the period ranging from the late 1980s to the early 2000s) with a particular focus on the historical significance of the Aberdeen Women’s Centre, which provided an exclusive space for women’s classes and groups to congregate, including those comprised of ethnic minority women at the turn of the century.
She advocates for the emancipation of marginalised narratives, recognising the importance of ‘unsilencing’ and validating the perspectives, experiences, and introspective feelings of all individuals.
Find out more about her research (link)
Abeer Eladany
Looking for connections to Egypt has been a continuous and personal project for Abeer since she moved to the Granite City. It provides comfort and links to her home in Cairo.
Abeer looked for shared histories and artistic representation across the city and within its museum collections and asked how it can contribute to the different views of Aberdeen.
To find out more about her research (link)
And thank you to Hussein, Teresa, Laura, Iina, Dominika, Christina, Emilia, Phoebe, Amber, Katka and all the rest of Four Pillars and GREC volunteers for their involvement at various stages of the project.