Rerooting Digital Genealogy: Tracing Indian Ocean Roots from Ancestry to Instagram

Public imaginaries of roots research often picture families pulling treasured heirlooms from weathered trunks and old documents from dusty archives, but for decades, much genealogy research has unfolded online. Yet despite the popularity of websites like Ancestry.com and Familysearch.org, and their efforts to attract a diverse, global user base, their resources skew heavily towards American and European records. This paper explores how families with ties to South Asia and the Indian Ocean engage with these platforms. Drawing on interviews with users, the paper shows how roots researchers are keenly aware of these websites' limits, including their ties to the boom-and-bust genetic-testing industry with its myriad ethical concerns. Yet some have found creative possibilities for using these platforms against the grain. Others have turned to resources beyond purpose-built genealogy websites, using tools like WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram to weave family histories that move beyond conventional archival sources to foreground oral histories, material heirlooms, and personal photography collections. These platforms have also fostered new networks of diasporic connection that, at times, challenge heteronormative, ethno-nationalist, and legalistic definitions of family, reimagining kinship in the process. Yet their dependence on profit-seeking algorithms, the aesthetics of nostalgia, and a focus on a “shared” past may obscure other histories, including those of caste in the diaspora. By probing the possibilities and limits of these bottom-up digital histories, the paper suggests that historians have much to learn by engaging more deeply with roots research, from multimedia research methods to alternative mediums for engaging wider publics.