In the summer of 1992 the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) of the University of London hosted a workshop that deserves the interest of the readers of Itinerario. It was a workshop on missionary archives exclusively meant to explore the rich potential of these missionary sources for social science research. The initiative for this two-day study-conference was taken by the historian David Arnold and the archivist Rosemary Seton, both of them associated with SOAS.