Abstract
Heritage archive material is known to embody memory that is vital in forming group and community identity. In this paper we present a case study of what can happen when official and unofficial heritage are brought together in a diasporic dialogue with a group of Iraqi Christians (Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs) living in England and with whom we worked within the Gertrude Bell Archive in Newcastle University. The paper examines how collective memory is mobilized within migration groups and shows these Iraqi Christians’ affiliation with their collective memory in relation to unresolved historical issues and collective trauma and how the living memory of the collective shapes individual decisions and sense of collective identity. Further, the paper aims to highlight the importance of moral responsibility in maintaining a lineage with the memory of the collective as a means to express moral continuity with the past.