Online Workshop: New Perspectives on Displaced Colonial Archives
Recent years have seen a proliferation of research about displaced colonial archives. Thanks to pioneering work by archive studies specialists, historians, and others, we have a deepening knowledge of the ways that declining empires sorted, destroyed, and removed archives during the twentieth century. This research has addressed profound concerns about how colonial – and decolonial – projects have shaped the world we live in. The interest in displaced colonial archives extends well beyond academia, and is being addressed as well in journalism, novels, and other media.
Yet the study of displaced colonial archives remains a relatively new field. Given the vast scale of the displacement of archives across multiple empires and territories, the scope for future research is huge. There is enormous potential for comparative and connected histories of the displacement of colonial archives within and between empires, including the Belgian, British, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish empires. While some parts of displaced colonial archives have now been quite intensively studied, much of this material remains under-used by researchers. We urgently need to know more about resistance to the removal of records, including efforts to contest and recover displaced archives. The strong recent interest in histories of knowledge and ignorance promises new theoretical and methodological approaches to the study of displaced colonial archives. We also need to consider how new research about these archives might reinvigorate our broader understandings of how colonial empires ended, and the incompleteness of these endings.
This online workshop seeks to facilitate inclusive discussion of new perspectives on displaced colonial archives. To attend, please email your name, title/status, and affiliation to displacedcolonialarchives[at]gmail.com by Friday 6 September 2022.
New Perspectives on Displaced Colonial Archives: Workshop Programme
All times are in Western European Summer Time/ West Africa Standard Time/ British Summer Time.
Day 1: Wednesday 11th September 2024
11.30-12.45. Keynote
Nathan Mnjama (University of Botswana, Botswana), ‘Migrated archives: past, present and future’
13.00-14.00. Panel 1: Indigenous peoples and displaced archives
Mervi Salo (University of Saskatchewan, Canada, and University of Tromsø, Norway), ‘Colonial archives and reconciliation: a comparative study of Canada and Norway’
Ping-Heng Chen (Heidelberg University, Germany), ‘Difficult heritage in museums: “displaced” ethnographic collections of Taiwanese indigenous peoples in postwar Japan and Taiwan’
14.15-15.45. Panel 2: Reckoning with displaced colonial archives from Asia
Alka Michael (Gargi College, Delhi University, India), ‘Displaced colonial archives of northeastern India: ethnographic documentation by colonial administrators’
Eleonor Marcussen (Linnaeus University, Sweden), ‘Connected archives: the many places of colonialism’
Matthew Hurst (University of York, UK), ‘Hong Kong colonial-era records at Hanslope Park’
Day 2: Thursday 12th September 2024
11.30-13.00. Panel 3: Access and Accessibility
Jon Piccini (Australian Catholic University, Australia), ‘“Whether the law is on our side or not”: archives and possession in Australia’s Pacific empire’
Bérengère Piret (UCLouvain, Belgium), ‘Partition, repatriation and concealment: historical insights and contemporary challenges of Burundian archives’
Miyanda Simabwachi (University of the Free State, South Africa), ‘Unravelling governance challenges: contestation and legacy in custody, control, and access of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland archives’
13.15-14.45. Panel 4: New horizons in displaced colonial archives research
Shohei Sato (Waseda University, Japan), ‘Britain and Japan’s destruction and displacement of sensitive records’
Dilyara Agisheva (University of Toronto, Canada), ‘Destruction, removal, and preservation of Crimean archives in the context of Russian orientalism: imperial venture into Crimea’s past’
Karl Hack (The Open University, UK), ‘Displacing colonial archives: Malaysia/Singapore as a case-study’
15.00-17.00. Panel 5: Resistance, repatriation, archival justice
Tim Livsey (Northumbria University, UK), ‘Managing information about racialised state injustices in the late colonial British empire’
Michael Karabinos (University of Amsterdam, Netherlands), ‘Restitution and restorative justice of archives within the Dutch Council for Culture advisory report’
Charles J. Farrugia and Leonard Callus (University of Malta and National Archives of Malta, Malta), ‘Migrated archives, the Malta case. Reflections by the National Archives of Malta’.
James Lowry (Queen’s College, City University of New York, United States), ‘Repatriation: interrogating an archival ideal’