Archives and Social Justice: ARA, Ireland Seminar Series

ARA, Ireland is pleased to present a seminar series on Archives and Social Justice, organised in collaboration with the School of History, UCD. Addressing topics of record keeping structures, archival memory and archival activism, these three short online seminars will be hosted across the last three Thursdays in May, starting with a keynote lecture from Dr James Lowry on the subject of ‘Archival Sovereignty’. This seminar series seeks to explore how archives and archivists can support social justice goals and agendas in a changing information and records management landscape. Our aim, as always, is to create a space for a community of archivists and records managers to come together to critically examine our profession. We hope to establish thematic and discursive connections across all three online events and we look forward to engaging with you, our members.

First Seminar – Dr James Lowry lecture on Archival Sovereignty

Launching the series, we are delighted to welcome Dr James Lowry, assistant professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, City University of New York, who will be leading a seminar on the subject of ‘Archival Sovereignty’. Drawing on relevant research into blockchain, displaced archives and repatriation, digital remains, Indigenous land and data sovereignty, open government data and civic technologies, privacy and data protection, refugee rights, community archives and state surveillance, this seminar will seek to move towards a definition of “archival sovereignty” that meaningfully characterises an ethical proposition that has portability across information problems and contexts.

This session will take place from 3:00-4:15pm on Thursday, 13th May and you can reserve your place here.

Second Seminar – Archives and Impact

Our second session will look at ways in which archives and archivists can support necessary confrontations with past injustices. Ashley Williams will be speaking on her research into the Universities Studying Slavery Consortium and Dr. Barry Houlihan (NUIG) will be addressing the question of archival memory and the records of survivors of institutional abuse in Ireland. 

This session will take place from 3:00-4:30 on Thursday, 20th May and you can reserve your place here. 

Third Seminar – Archives and Activism

The final seminar in this series will examine the documentation and preservation of important social and political movements in Irish history.We are delighted to host Dr. Maeve O’Brien from the Archiving the 8th Project and Niamh Ní Charra from the Conradh na Gaeilge Archive, NUIG who will be looking at two key collections that document the efforts of activists in transforming the cultural landscape of the country.

This session will take place from 3:00-4:30 on Thursday, 27th May and you can reserve your place here.

This seminar series is being co-hosted and co-organised with Dr Elizabeth Mullins, course coordinator for the MA in Archives and Records Management at UCD. We would like to extend our thanks to all of the speakers for their participation and engagement.