Events

Approaching the (Family) Archive: Challenges and Reflections

A Series of Online, Interdisciplinary Workshops: May 2022–January 2023

To register please email i.f.m.peck@bham.ac.uk

Dusty shoeboxes of papers; drawers of textiles and treasured keepsakes; scrapbooks and albums of tickets, photographs, and ephemera: our homes are sites of intergenerational collection and curation. And yet, though the recent ‘archival turn’ has led to a renewed interest in the collections compiled by institutions and eminent individuals, we know rather less about the papers and artefacts accumulated by families and the diverse meanings that these items have possessed for those created and preserved them. The materials of family life are rarely approached as ‘archives’ – but, when transferred into local and national record offices, these same collections go on to form a significant part of our nation’s archival heritage.

This series of workshops seeks to bring together practitioners from a range of disciplines, periods, and geographic contexts to explore some of the major challenges that confront scholars working on, and with, family collections and archives, ideologically, methodologically, conceptually, and practically. 

Each workshop centres around a particular “challenge” and features a paper by guest speaker(s) who will reflect on the ways that they have approached this issue in their own work. The rest of the workshop will be given over to questions and an open-ended discussion of the issues raised, allowing scholars share practice and connect with other researchers working in the fields of family, memory, collections, and archival practice. 

Culminating in a two-day conference on ‘Family Archives’ in June 2023, it is hoped that these workshops will offer a space for both new and established scholars to discuss, not just the results of their research, but the processes, practices, and challenges that have informed it. 

workshops

Workshop 1: Collected, Curated, Other?
10am 25 May 2022
Speakers: Dr Katie Barclay (University of Adelaide) and Dr Liesbeth Corens (Queen Mary, University of London)


Workshop 2: Objects as Archive
4pm 20 July 2022
Speaker: Prof Jill Journeaux (Coventry University)

Workshop 3: Absence in the Archive
4pm 22 September 2022
Speaker: Prof Catherine Clarke (Institute of Historical Research)

Workshop 4: Archives into Institutions
4pm 23 November 2022
Speaker: Dr Ann-Marie Foster (Northumbria University) and Mr Tom Plant (Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre)

Workshop 5: Accessing the Family: Private Collections
TBC January 2023
Speakers: Dr Laura King (University of Leeds), Ms Emma Carson (University of Adelaide), and Ms Lucy Brownson (University of Sheffield/Chatsworth House Trust)