ICA-SUV Ethical Archivists Project

Gabriele Mohale (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa) 

The LabDay methodology has been used in several EU projects that engage key stakeholders directly into the research. This tested and proven method goes beyond transactional focus group methods as it engages and inspires participants to embed themselves in research, and this is important when trying to include youth and hard to reach communities and stakeholders often removed from the decision-making processes. This framework is underpinned by Communicative Methodology (CM), a sociological method that aims to cross social, cultural and linguistic boundaries. This framework enables an open, egalitarian dialogue between researchers and participants; it is a collaboratively-held space where all voices are acknowledged and valued and stakeholders can reflect together on their needs, desires and various forms of participation. This bottom-up approach enables cultural communities to themselves become a driver for the outputs.

Why did the LabDay lend itself to the ICA-SUV Ethics and Archives project?  Since the team was keen to include voices from across the globe, we needed to find a method that would be inclusive, and could allow for dialogical and egalitarian conversations to emerge while also being a call to action. The LabDay has a flexibility built into it as it allows individuals from multiple backgrounds to share their experiences and to offer solutions to a “problem” or gaps in understanding and brings forward case studies and other ways of knowing. The LabDay also relies on what has been termed as a provocation, which could be thought of as an open-ended invitation to explore, wonder, spark interest, stimulate thought and encourage questioning.  The aim of the provocation is to inspire and to encourage dialogue, share thoughts and ideas on a topic. 

The first LabDay for the English-speaking community was held March 2nd, 2022 online via Zoom. Cisneros was supported by her colleague Kauser Husain from C-DaRE and the two hosted the event that welcomed Gabriele Mohale, Ranjani Prasad, Venkat Srinivasan and Faisal Rehman. The guests were nominated by the team and Cisneros engaged with each to explain the concept of the LabDay. The first event was a non-public event which allowed for an initial exploration of the three themes with a small number of participants who would then go on to help facilitate the subsequent public LabDay.    

The guests invited were:

 

Gabriele MOHALE[1] (South Africa)-  is the Acting Head and Archivist at the Historical Papers Researcher Archive, University of the Witwatersrand, which is instrumental in accentuating the role and status of archives in civil society, with events and initiatives around Archives and Democracy.

Ranjani Prasad[2] (India) has been involved with archival practice, research and curation over the last decade. Her interests are at the intersections of histories, communities, technologies. She is presently part of the People and Nature Collectives at Keystone Foundation, Kotagiri, Nilgiris.

Faisal Rehman[3] (India) is a researcher at Keystone Foundation, working with the People and Nature Collectives at Kotagiri, Nilgiris; with interests in public history, community representation, and the politics of knowledge flows and ownership.

 

Venkat Srinivasan[4] (India) is an archivist at the Archives at NCBS (Bangalore, India), a public collecting centre for the history of contemporary biology in India.



The four individuals presented themselves and framed their perspective and archival practice and then offered provocations. 

[1] Gabriele Mohale: Function: Acting Head, Historical Papers Research Archive https://www.ica.org/en/member/12297
[2] Ranjani Prasad: ​​https://in.linkedin.com/in/ranjani-prasad-95b57637
[3] Faisal Rehman: https://keystone-foundation.org/team/
[4] Venkat Srinivasan: https://archives.ncbs.res.in/about

The next and final intervention was a joint presentation by Prasad and Rehman. The duo were representing Keystone Foundation, today a hub of learning and creation. Prasad and Rehmam, also based in India, suggested that community archives offer opportunities to reflect on ethical practices. They presented three case studies from their local area and touched on the cultural geographies and questions around community archives and the oral histories that surround their projects. The two also suggested that safeguarding and policies were important and that knowledge sharing from diverse perspectives that honoured diverse language was key to developing an ethical archive.  The two rounded out the session by returning to Mohale’s questions on terminology and the role of the custodian. 

In summary, the themes that emerged included the use of terminology and language, questions around the role the institution plays with supporting, developing and guiding the archive, the trust within the community towards the archive and those researchers negotiating those spaces, and the power language has when negotiating archival practices. Privacy and the right to be forgotten was also mentioned and safeguarding policies and humanising archives felt important to all involved. 

Raventós, Aleman and Flores each presented their institutions and described their positions within the organisations.  They each presented dilemmas and tensions that feel very relevant and timely to them. Those questions included questions around what are best practices and how can we include those voices that aren’t present? What mechanism needs to be considered to allow access of multiple voices? 

 

●      The very fact of the conversation with colleagues from other spheres and dimensions. Among others, the dialogue with Pepita and Rosa's moderation

●      Listen to different experiences and especially that it has been in Spanish

 

●      knowledge, experience, innovations

●      Commitment - Sharing - Community - Learning

 

 

●      The contribution of the exchange of ideas

●      Knowing colleagues and, in general, people who work in and for archives enriches our work, contributes new ideas and imagines new things for our information units.

 

 

●      It has not changed my basic ideas on the subject

●      Of course, there were several things and practices that the colleagues commented on and that I have incorporated for discussion with my colleagues in the office, one of them was obtaining files external to the U (personal, from other institutions) and how we should think about where they would be better those files, where they could be available to those who require them despite our "good intention2" of having them at the University.

 

●      Presentation of specific cases where ethics is at stake

●      Definitely in knowing more experiences, not necessarily big projects but initiatives like the ones I saw on your website with the Roma community.

Dissemination was important to the project and the work was circulated via several networks.  The team prepared the poster below which contained the English and Spanish details. This was intentional as we wanted to ensure that the entire archival community receiving the invite to save the date was aware that English and Spanish sessions were being organised. Indeed, English is a dominant language, and we ensured we chose an hour that was convenient to many, but we also purposely created all materials in both languages. The Save the Date invites were circulated online, to the JISC-Mail list[1], hosted on the ICA-SUV website and also distributed widely on social media. 

 

[1] JISC-Mail list:  Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities 

In summary, it emerged that there is significant interest in this area and a desire for conceptual and thematic discussion, as well as action. The data and feedback reveal there is a lot to learn from each other and that listening to international and intercultural case studies and first-hand experiences of archivists are essential to transformation. Advancing ethics and archives depends on operating from a place of respect, within inclusive conversations, where such spaces provide archivists with different lived experiences the opportunity to explore and offer provocations on ethics and archives.