Arts & Culture
Building bridges through digital humanities: UC Santa Cruz project reframes Sikh studies for the 21st Century
The research initiative Sikhs in the 21st Century: Remembering the Past, Engaging the Future aims to reshape how a religious tradition is studied, taught, and understood.
The research initiative Sikhs in the 21st Century: Remembering the Past, Engaging the Future is not just documenting a religious tradition—it aims to reshape how it’s studied, taught, and understood.
Led by Distinguished Professor of Economics Nirvikar Singh and housed at The Humanities Institute (THI), the project is helping to reimagine Sikh and Punjabi Studies for a global, digital age through a growing collection of visually rich, academically rigorous videos on Sikh history and culture.
“Much of the existing material either glosses over complexities or makes assumptions that are not rigorously founded,” said Singh, Co-Director of the Center for Analytical Finance, where he was the founding Director.
Singh previously held the Sarbjit Singh Aurora Chair of Sikh and Punjabi Studies (2010–2020) and directed UC Santa Cruz’s South Asian Studies Initiative.
“This project asks: What if we take a step back, and not take anything for granted, even if it is conventional scholarly wisdom?” Singh said.
That kind of deep questioning is core to THI’s mission to advance inclusive, interdisciplinary, and public-facing humanities research, said Professor of Linguistics and THI Faculty Director Pranav Anand.
The project is also deeply personal for Singh, a scholar raised in the Sikh tradition and long attuned to how it has often been misunderstood, even in academia.
With themes ranging from the evolution of Sikh institutions to the interplay of diasporic identity and language, the videos aim to correct misreadings that frame the Sikh tradition as either amorphous for much of its history, or as being shaped mostly by colonial-era pressures.
Singh and his project collaborators push back against such narratives, which he says stem from outdated or under-evidenced scholarly efforts.
Yet the project is about more than correcting the record. It’s also about expanding access—to ideas, to archives, and to scholarship itself.
“Videos don’t always fit neatly into traditional academic incentives, so younger or marginalized scholars can be reluctant to engage,” Singh explained. “But these scholars bring crucial insights, and we wanted to give them a voice. In doing this, we have also been fortunate to work with The Teaching and Learning Center at UC Santa Cruz, which has deep expertise in producing materials for online education.”
That commitment is especially notable in a field that, like many within the humanities, has often privileged Western institutions and gatekeepers.
In response, Sikhs in the 21st Century actively seeks to involve scholars from Punjab – the birthplace of the Sikh tradition – and those working in the US, but outside elite networks.
The project also foregrounds a careful curation of images and sources, laying the groundwork for a future archive that can serve as a foundation for further research.
It’s a vision that reflects THI’s belief in the public value of humanities research—particularly when it amplifies voices and histories that have been sidelined. And it resonates with broader efforts to decolonize knowledge and democratize its production.
Simran Jeet Singh, a bestselling author and professor at Union Theological Seminary, recently interviewed Nirvikar Singh for his newsletter More of This, Please, noting how the project stands out for its intellectual integrity and cultural sensitivity.
Indeed, Nirvikar Singh sees the project as a kind of “middle path”—resisting both academic condescension and defensive essentialism. “We want to honor the richness of the Sikh tradition without falling into oversimplification,” he said. “At the same time, we want to meet the standards of rigorous critical scholarship.”
This balanced, bridge-building approach is visible in the project’s aesthetics as much as its content. Each video is layered with images, maps, and archival visuals, meticulously sourced, verified, and contextualized. Singh and his team hope these multimedia tools will engage younger audiences, particularly Sikh youth who may be seeking connection in the face of cultural assimilation or fragmentation of identities.
“Our hope,” he said, “is that we can help people—scholars and community members alike—see old things in new ways.”
Sikhs in the 21st Century is doing just that: innovating within digital humanities, mentoring marginalized scholars, and offering a model of engaged, respectful, and rigorous research.
In Nirvikar Singh’s words: “It’s about learning and understanding—real, nuanced, grounded understanding for everyone. That’s an important role of the humanities in education.”
This project is supported by the 5Rivers Foundation, The Humanities Institute, and the UCSC Humanities Division.