Archive Research Community (ARC) Conference – Heritage, Community, Archives: Methods, Case Studies, Collaboration

Banner - Heritage, Community, Archives: Methods, Case Studies, Collaboration Sheffield Hallam University Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th June 2023 Image: Wiki Commons – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license

Heritage, Community, Archives: Methods, Case Studies, Collaboration

Sheffield Hallam University – Cantor Building

Monday 12th and Tuesday 13th June 2023

Find the programme available on the Archive Research Community website here. You can also read the conference overview here and the full conference programme online here.

Keynote speaker: Dr Hannah Ishmael, University College London / Black Cultural Archives

Keynote panel: Cinema and Social Justice, featuring Dr Martin HallDr Lauren StephensonDr Steve Rawle, and the Yorkshire Film Archive, with a screening of the film Cost of Living (2022)

This interdisciplinary conference examines questions of heritage and community in and beyond the archive. Archives and the dominance of their contents and creators are being reimagined through creative approaches and reuse; silences and gaps in the archive are being emphasised, discussed, and filled; archival cataloguing and contextualisation are being revisited; and community archives and counter archives are being created in an attempt to document and preserve a more inclusive heritage and memory. Alongside, archives must be used in urgent activist work now as part of liberatory memory work in the present (Caswell 2021; Flinn and Alexander 2015). The conference poses the following questions:

  1. What is the role of archives, archives creation, and archival collaboration in the process of heritage, history, and community?
  2. Whose archives have been preserved? What and whose archives are missing?
  3. How can archivists and researchers in humanities and archival studies engage in a dialogue and constructive work to make liberatory, emancipatory, and community/people-driven archives and histories?
  4. How can archives and archival research be used for activist and social justice work and for radical heritage-making?

The conference brings together researchers and archivists and covers a spectrum of approaches being taken by researchers and archivists, encompassing various forms of archives, whether paper, audio-visual, audio, or visual-based; whether physical or digital; whether institutional, community, or private. The conference also critically reflects on the work of archivists, academics, historians, and filmmakers and their approaches to archives and archival practice.

The conference is supported by the Archive Research Community.

Delegate fee:

  • £50 for academic / waged.
  • No fee for students, but please register online.

A light buffet lunch will be provided each day, along with refreshments. There will be a wine reception and an optional conference dinner on the evening of Monday 12th June, details TBC.

Image: Wiki Commons – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license


Archive Research Community (ARC)

Organised by: The Archive Research Community (ARC) at SHU

The Archives Research Community (ARC) is a cross-disciplinary group of like-minded researchers, students, and archivists based at Sheffield Hallam University, in particular the Culture & Creativity Research Institute (CCRI). The ARC launched in November 2022 and meets on a monthly basis. The ARC’s aim and objectives can be viewed here and the membership here.

If you are interested in participating in the ARC or learning more about the group’s work, please email the convenor of the group, James Fenwick here.