The Apartheid Archives project is an international research initiative that aims to examine the nature of the experiences of racism of particularly 'ordinary' South Africans under the old apartheid order and their continuing effects on individual and group functioning in contemporary South Africa. The project is fundamentally premised on the understanding that traumatic experiences from the past will constantly attempt to re-inscribe themselves in the present, often in masked form, if they are not acknowledged, interrogated and addressed.

To this end, the project collects documents, analyses and provides access to personal or narrative accounts of the impact of apartheid on the lived realities of their authors. The project was conceptualized and initiated in August 2008 by 22 core researchers located at universities spanning South Africa, Australia, the United States and United Kingdom. Research for this project will take place in several phases and over a minimum of five years