2026 AUAC Conference: Who is Responsible for the Archives (Conference )
Aston University (in-person and online)
Organization: Aston University
Event: Conference
2026 AUAC Conference: Who is Responsible for the Archives?
Who is Responsible for the Archives? An Interdisciplinary Approach to Ethics in a Digital Age
When: Friday 26 June 2026, 9:00–5:00 pm
Where: Aston University campus in Birmingham, UK, and online (hybrid format)
Theme: Archives are vital repositories for preserving the past, for documenting the present, and for building memories and legacies for the future. Although they hold relevance to everybody’s history and affect society as a whole, they have long been the purview of a limited group of archivists and historians. In recent years, this has begun to change: archives, both as documents and as repositories, have received increasing attention from scholars across diverse disciplines and also from the broader public.
However, if questions of representation, digital transformation, and long-term preservation have become central to contemporary debates, issues related to ethics remain often limited to legal compliance or confined to a limited group of specialists. Building on previous debates including the US 2018 National Forum on Ethics & Archiving the Web and the ICA’s 2022 Ethics and Archives Online Discussion, and also on the ARA’s ongoing work in this area, this conference seeks to expand this discussion by bringing together experts and practitioners from all fields.
Submission guidelines
Contribution type: proposals for a 15-min paper to be presented at the conference either in person or online.
Submission: please send a 250-word abstract and one-page CV by 13 April 2026 to AUACConference2026@aston.ac.uk, specifying if you would be presenting remotely or in person.
Contact and information: Dr Ilaria Scaglia i.scaglia@aston.ac.uk
Notifications of acceptance in the programme will be sent by 30 April 2026.
Ilaria Scaglia