Category: Call for Presentations

CFP: Material Culture Workshop: “Re-Materialising: Navigating Transience and Absence” – University of Cambridge

Deadline: Sept. 11, 2026

The Material Culture Workshop at the University of Cambridge invites submissions for 20 minute papers for our Michaelmas 2026 sessions on the theme “Re-Materialising: Navigating Transience and Absence.”

  • How do we approach object-based studies without the object?
  • How can we use extant archival material to “reconstruct” the material lives of groups and individuals traditionally underrepresented in institutional collections?
  • How does the archive present challenges and opportunities as a material object itself?

This theme invites projects which challenge disciplinary divisions and embrace material culture studies of non-extant objects and understudied groups. Papers may engage with themes of fragmentation, archival absence, loss, transient objects/experiences, unconventional archival practice, and related topics.

The Material Culture Workshop is convened by postgraduate students Cecelia Eure and Robert Hewis and aims to highlight the work of early career researchers and practitioners in history, art history, archaeology, anthropology, cultural studies, and related disciplines. It is hosted in-person at the University of Cambridge and online at 5:30 pm every other Monday.

Submissions must include a title, abstract (250 words), and a brief bio, sent as a Word document to Cecelia Eure (cre48@cam.ac.uk) by 11 September 2026.

Contact Information

Faculty of History, University of Cambridge

Contact Email

cre48@cam.ac.uk

CFP: Popular Culture Association Libraries, Archives, and Museums

The Popular Culture Association (PCA) annual conference will be held March 24-27, 2027 at the Boston Marriott Copley Place in Boston, Massachusetts. Scholars from a wide variety of disciplines will meet to share their Popular Culture research and interests. The Libraries, Archives & Museums area invites proposals dealing with any aspect of Popular Culture as it pertains to libraries, archives, museums, or related areas.

The 2027 PCA conference theme is “Revolutions & Revisions in Popular Culture.” Presenters in Libraries, Archives & Museums are invited to consider how their work might engage with questions of transformation, reinterpretation, innovation, resistance, adaptation, or cultural change. Theme-related proposals are welcome but not required, and all submissions relevant to the area will receive full consideration.

Possible topics can include:

  • Explanations and depictions of research collections, archival collections, or exhibits;
  • Advances in technical services for collecting/preserving/exhibiting popular culture materials;
  • Using popular culture materials in educational programs and/or information literacy instruction;
  • Analyses of social media or web resources in library, museum, or archival work;
  • Challenges on materials and/or services, and related pressures on library/museum/archive workers;
  • Issues related to repatriation of materials in museums or archives;
  • Representations of libraries, librarians, museums, archivists, and related workers in popular culture and media;
  • The effects of emerging tech and generative AI on the field.

Proposals should be 150-200 words; typical presentations are 15-20 minutes. The deadline for submitting a proposal is October 31, 2026. 

Please direct any questions to the area chair.

Contact Information

Elizabeth “Beth” Downey, Mississippi State University

PCA Area Chair of Libraries, Archives and Museums

Contact Email

edowney@library.msstate.edu

URL

https://pcaaca.org/page/submissionguidelines

CFP: American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting and MuseumExpo

Under the theme Mission. Value. Impact., the 2027 AAM Annual Meeting & MuseumExpo will explore how museums can strengthen their organizations, expand their impact, and make a clearer case for why their work matters.

We’re looking for practical strategies, innovative ideas, and real-world examples across four areas:

Audience, Experiences & Value Creation

Financial Sustainability & Growth

Organizational Capacity & Operations

Innovation & Future Readiness

If your work is helping museums engage audiences differently, strengthen operations, build financial resilience, measure impact, or prepare for what comes next, share what you’re learning with the field.

Submit your proposal by September 21. Applicants will be notified in December.

💭 What conversations, challenges, or ideas do you think the museum field needs to explore in 2027?

Learn more and submit a proposal: https://annualmeeting.aam-us.org/callforproposals/

CFP: Confluence: Where Art, Information, and Community Flow Together

The Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA) will hold its 55th annual conference, Confluence: Where Art, Information, and Community Flow Together, in Portland, Oregon, April 4-7, 2027.

In Northern Portland, at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, waters that have traveled different paths meet, carrying distinct histories, sediments, and stories into a shared current. Maya Lin’s Confluence Project, located along the Columbia River basin, reflects on these meeting places as sites of memory, Indigenous history, and environmental reflection, reminding us that rivers and people are shaped by both movement and encounter. Confluence: Where Art, Information, and Community Flow Together, the Art Libraries Society of North America’s 55th Annual Conference, considers what these ideas mean within the context of art librarianship, and the art information ecosystem more broadly. 

As art information professionals, we each bring our own unique perspectives and experiences to conferences, the Society, and the profession at large. Yet, like two rivers merging, by coming together to share our knowledge and learn from our colleagues, we foster vital connections and a more dynamic profession. Gathering at the confluence becomes a fitting metaphor: separate voices, experiences, and struggles joining together to create something stronger in common. In the spirit of the idea that “You can’t step into the same river twice,” Confluence: Where Art, Information, and Community Flow Together invites us to embrace our interconnectedness, celebrate our differences, and creatively engage with the ebbs and flows of our profession. 

The deadline for proposals is Monday, September 14, 2026 at 11:59pm UTC.

The Conference Program Committee invites librarians and library professionals, archivists, curators, museum professionals, visual resources specialists, publishers, educators, artists, designers, architects, students, and scholars to propose papers, sessions, workshops, and speakers that reflect the theme Confluence as it relates to the practice of art information and scholarship. The committee also encourages submissions that stretch the bounds of traditional conference scholarship in terms of format and delivery.

Conference registration and attendance are mandatory for all presenters.

In addition to the topics listed below, we encourage proposals that explore Confluence. Examples could include: GLAM collaborations, cross-cultural knowledge creation, integrated collection systems, consortial art libraries and collaborative stewardship, community partnerships, librarian-faculty collaborations, donor relations, and other ways that networks of knowledge, and knowledge workers, intersect.

The program committee encourages submissions that include, but are not limited to the following topics:

  • Alternative Publications, Artists’ Books, Comics, Zines, etc.
  • Archives, Rare Books, and Special Collections
  • Censorship of information and Resources
  • Collection Development and Management
  • Critical Librarianship
  • Digital Humanities and Digital Scholarship
  • Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility
  • Fair Use and Copyright Issues
  • Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Field of Librarianship
  • Innovations in Cataloguing
  • Leadership, Mentoring, Management, and Professional Development
  • New approaches to Providing Reference Services
  • Social Justice, Advocacy, Anti-Racism, Public Policy, and Activism
  • Teaching and Pedagogical Practice
  • User Experience
  • Visual Literacy, Critical Information Literacy, Media Literacy

Types of Submissions

PAPERS: An individual paper presentation, potentially addressing new research, a case study, or an innovative idea with a total time of 15-20 minutes. Presentations provide attendees with new tools, strategies, or inspiration that they can apply in their own practice. The Conference Program Co-Chairs and the Conference Program Committee will group individual presentations into paper panels with a common topic or theme, which will run from 60 to 90 minutes, including a Q&A.

LIGHTNING TALKS: A short individual presentation (5-10 minutes maximum) addressing a topic that is particularly timely or specific in scope. Lightning talks provide attendees the opportunity to hear about a range of innovative projects or ideas from a broad and varied group of colleagues in a short amount of time. Lightning talks will be grouped into sessions that may or may not be themed. Lightning talk sessions will be 60 minutes, including a Q&A.

PRE-COORDINATED PANELS: A pre-coordinated session of up to 4 presenters with a moderator addressing a common topic or theme with a total time of 60-90 minutes, including a Q&A. Panels provide attendees with multiple views/strategies on a single topical area, a comparison of tools or methods, or a number of case studies on related topics. It is not necessary to identify all potential presenters before submitting. Naming a moderator, who will advocate for and develop the session, is required. The moderator may be one of the presenters or may serve only as the moderator. 

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS: Small, informal group discussions around a common theme or issue. In the abstract field, facilitators should identify a topic and submit at least three potential questions that will keep the discussion moving. Roundtable speakers should also be prepared to take questions from the audience. Discussions are 60 minutes in length.

WORKSHOPS: An opportunity to teach and explore current and emerging topics in an intimate atmosphere. Workshops encourage a focused, engaging experience led by experts who combine presentation, active learning, collaboration, and discussion. They may last 90 to 180 minutes.

SPEAKER SUGGESTIONS & PLENARIES: A plenary may be a prepared paper or discussion panel of significant importance to the profession. Plenaries are 60-90 minutes in length. No other meetings, sessions, etc. are scheduled during plenaries. The content of plenaries should be current and of broad interest to attendees. Non-member speakers who will speak on a significant topic of interest to ARLIS/NA members may be suggested here.

Additional Details

The following fields will be used by the programming committee to review proposals. In addition, some non-personally identifiable demographic information will be used by the reviewers to ensure that the papers, lightning talks, workshops, and invited speakers are inclusive and diverse, both in the voices present and content delivered.

WORD LIMIT: All proposal abstracts are limited to 500 words or fewer.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES: You’ll be asked to list 2-3 learning objectives, takeaways, or goals for your proposal.

TOPICS: You’ll be asked to select 2 to 5 topics relevant to your session.

AUDIENCES: You’ll be asked to pick up to 5 target audiences for your session.

DEIA-AR: You will be asked if your presentation addresses issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and/or anti-racism. The committee is particularly interested in seeing papers and sessions that include attention to DEIA-AR.

YEARS IN PROFESSION (optional): You’ll be asked to select how long you have been working in the field.

FIRST TIME PRESENTER (optional): You’ll be asked if this would be your first time presenting at an ARLIS/NA conference.

SELF-IDENTIFICATION (optional): You’ll be asked if you are a member of a historically under-represented group. This information will only be used to help us coordinate diverse sessions and is not required to propose a paper or panel.

How to Submit Proposals

The review of proposals is a blind peer review process. You must anonymize your proposal description. All personal or institutional names must be removed from the description and learning objectives (however, these details must remain in other fields of the form), and may be replaced by terms such as “presenter,” “author,” or “speaker”, or in the case of institutions, terms such as “large academic library,” “small museum library,” etc. Non-anonymized proposals may be ineligible.

Submit your proposals via Sched: https://cfp.sched.com/speaker/dJoatUIcMG/event

The deadline is Monday, September 14, 2026 11:59pm UTC.

Funding Opportunities

Prospective presenters interested in funding and support for conference attendance are encouraged to apply to the Society’s Conference Attendance and Travel Awards or to contact their local ARLIS/NA Chapter about the availability of additional awards.

The call for posters, moderators, and other meeting proposals will be announced

later this year.

Please direct any questions to Program Co-chairs:

Stefanie Hilles, Miami University, hillessa@miamioh.edu

Stephanie Kays, Denison University, kayss@denison.edu

CFP: Library History Seminar XV

The Library History Round Table (LHRT) of the American Library Association (ALA) is pleased to announce our 15th Library History Seminar (LHS) and we’d like to offer you an opportunity to share your research!

LHS XV conference will take place virtually December 3-5, 2026. The theme is “A History of Modern Libraries, Warts and All: Development, Organization, and Transformation.” The conference will be low-cost or no-cost for attendees. 

The American Library Association is celebrating its 150th year in 2026 and LHS XV seeks to explore all aspects  of the history of modern libraries and librarianship in North America and beyond. “Libraries” is defined broadly and includes public, academic, school and special libraries, library organizations (state, national, and international).  We especially welcome voices from marginalized and non-mainstream communities, and critical examinations of the history of modern libraries/librarianship.  

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

  • History of ALA or other modern library organizations 
  • History of individual libraries in the modern era
  • Examination of decisions and actions affecting the profession
  • Librarians who have contributed to the development of modern libraries and librarianship
  • Developments in public and technical services
  • Cooperation and collaboration in the modern library world
  • Development of the modern literature of librarianship

We are seeking proposals for individual papers (15 minutes) or organized panels (1 hour). 

Submissions are due by September 4 2026, 11:59pm EST. Please submit your proposal below. 

Please contact Ellen Pozzi at ellen.pozzi@gmail.com with any questions.

Proposal form

CFP: Star Wars 50 Years: Pasts, Presents, and Futures

The Star Wars 50 Years academic conference will be held by the University of Leicester and the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space at Space Park Leicester on 21-22 May 2027 in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the original release of the film on 25 May 1977 in the U.S. We are now inviting proposals for conference presentations.

Conference Organisers:

Xiyuan Gao, PhD Candidate – Conference Director
Dr David Christopher – Conference Co-Director
Dr James Aitcheson – Leverhulme Centre Partner
Dr Tara Smith – Leverhulme Centre Partner
Helen Bruce, PhD Candidate – Director, Festival of Media Stories

Overview

Star Wars: A New Hope was first released in the United States on 25 May 1977, inaugurating a screen franchise whose cultural, industrial, and imaginative afterlives now span half a century. The Star Wars 50 Years Conference will mark the anniversary by bringing together scholars, researchers, practitioners, archivists, and fans at the Leverhulme Centre for Humanity and Space in Leicester contiguous with The National Space Centre.

The Centre hosts numerous Star Wars-themed public events throughout the year, and we will be excited to follow their developing programme with an eye to connecting their events and screenings to the conference.

Leicester and Leicestershire occupy a distinctive place in the history of Star Wars in the UK. Leicestershire was home to Palitoy, the toy company that held the coveted manufacturing contract in the UK during the original trilogy era.

Palitoy’s Star Wars figures, vehicles, packaging, and playsets remain central to British collecting cultures and to the material memory of the franchise, linking Leicestershire to the commercial and affective history of Star Wars childhoods, fandom, and merchandising. Indeed, Matt Holt’s upcoming documentary In a Landfill Far, Far Away (Spoon Jar Films) seeks to discover the so-called ‘lost toys’ from the Palitoy factory putatively buried somewhere in Leicestershire which is sure to create a scholarly buzz: ‘Filmmaker unearths legend of buried Star Wars toys’.

Leicestershire’s connection to the franchise is also embodied in personnel history. The late Jeremy Bulloch, born in Market Harborough, was the first actor to perform Boba Fett in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, helping to create one of the most enduring and enigmatic figures in Star Wars. His association with Boba Fett further situates Leicestershire within the lived and performed history of Star Wars, extending the county’s relevance beyond merchandising and into questions of screen performance, character embodiment, cult stardom, and fan memory. Gareth Edwards, director of Rogue One also calls Nuneaton home.

More broadly, the franchise has launched or fostered the careers of myriad British performers from Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing though to John Boyega, Felicity Jones, and Daisy Ridley. And so much of Lucas’s production efforts were located at various studios and locations across the UK including locations in Leicestershire.

Star Wars 50 Years invites contributors to reflect on the franchise’s pasts, presents, and futures, especially with regard to the participation of UK production inputs or international franchise phenomena, but not necessarily limited by this parameter as such. The conference welcomes papers on Star Wars across film, television, animation, games, publishing, merchandising, fan communities, transmedia storytelling, race, gender, class, politics, technology, nostalgia, and global reception, etc.

By gathering in Leicester, the conference asks not only what Star Wars has meant over the past fifty years, but also how particular places, objects, performances, institutions, and communities have shaped the franchise’s meanings across the UK and beyond.

Topics of Interest

We welcome papers on, but not limited to, the following research topics:

  • Star Wars histories, legacies, and cultural memory.
  • Directors, writers, producers, showrunners, designers, performers, and other creative workers across the franchise.
  • Star Wars and transmedia storytelling across film, television, animation, novels, comics, games, audio, toys, and digital platforms.
  • Expanded universes, canon, continuity, retconning, and the relationship between Legends and Disney-era canon.
  • Star Wars television and Disney+ distribution.
  • Star Wars animation (The Clone Wars, Rebels, and more recent animated projects).
  • Star Wars games, interactive storytelling, virtual worlds, and player agency.
  • Ethnicity, class, disability, age, and embodiment in Star Wars.
  • Feminism, female characters, creators, audiences, and female-led fan practices.
  • Masculinity, fatherhood, family, lineage, inheritance, and dynastic storytelling.
  • Queer readings, slash fandom, transformative works, and alternative affective attachments.
  • Stardom, performance, voice acting, physical performance, puppetry, motion capture, and creature performance.
  • Practical effects, digital effects, CGI, sound design, editing, and the aesthetics of technological change.
  • John Williams, musical themes, soundscapes, voice, and sonic memory.
  • Merchandising, toys, collecting, licensing, branding, and commercial culture.
  • Museums, exhibitions, archives, private collections, fan collections, and the preservation of Star Wars objects.
  • Global Star Wars: international reception, translation, dubbing, subtitling, censorship, distribution, and localisation.
  • Fandom, fanfiction, fan art, cosplay, fan films, podcasts, conventions, online communities, and platform cultures.
  • Fan controversy, anti-fandom, canon disputes, toxicity, moderation, inclusion, and community governance.
  • Nostalgia, childhood, memory, intergenerational spectatorship, collecting, and affect.
  • Science, space travel, astronomy, robotics, artificial intelligence, and the relationship between Star Wars and public science imagination.
  • Theme parks, immersive experiences, live events, exhibitions, tourism, and commercialised fan participation.
  • Archives, lost materials, production histories, oral histories, memory work, and fan-led preservation.
  • The future of Star Wars: franchise fatigue, renewal, legacy, and new audiences.

The conference is scheduled to be on-site and in-person. The submission of remote presentation proposals will be considered only under specific mitigating circumstances.

Submission Details

Individual Papers

The individual proposal shall include the following information, all in the same document:

  • A title.
  • An abstract (maximum 300 words) for a 15-20-minute presentation.
  • Speaker’s short biography (maximum 150 words), including affiliation.
  • Speaker’s email address.

Pre-constituted Panels

The panel proposal shall include the following information, all in the same document:

  • A panel title.
  • All individual abstracts (maximum 300 words each).
  • All speakers’ short biographies (maximum 150 words each), including their affiliation and email address.
  • If you wish to designate a panel chair, please indicate this in the panel proposal. Otherwise, the committee will assign one for you.

To submit, please email your proposal as an attachment (Word file preferred) to sw-conf-50@leicester.ac.uk by 1-November-2026. Please clearly state in the email subject either “Star Wars 50 Years individual proposal” or “Star Wars 50 Years panel proposal”.

Notification of accepted papers and panel proposals will be returned on or before 31st January 2027.

Conference Address

Space Park Leicester
Space City, 92 Corporation Rd, Leicester
Postcode: LE4 5SP

Contact Information

If you have any queries regarding the conference, please email conference director Xiyuan Gao (xg92@leicester.ac.uk) or co-director Dr David Christopher (dc435@leicester.ac.uk).

General enquiries: sw-conf-50@leicester.ac.uk

Contact Email

sw-conf-50@leicester.ac.uk

URL

https://le.ac.uk/media/research/star-wars-50-years

2027 ICMS Sponsored Session Call for Papers: “Manuscript Collecting in North America”

On behalf of Digital Scriptorium and the Peripheral Manuscripts Project, see the following CFP for a sponsored session at the 2027 International Congress on Medieval Studies, to be held at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, May 13-15, 2027.

Manuscript Collecting in North America: Considering the Means, Motives, and Opportunities

Sponsored by Digital Scriptorium and the Peripheral Manuscripts Project

Regional and national efforts have recently increased the discoverability of the numerous medieval manuscript holdings found in North American collections. Such projects have made more–and better–data available about North American manuscripts, revealing complex histories of manuscript circulation on this continent. We invite papers that consider the many motivations that drove collectors, booksellers, and institutions to acquire and trade manuscripts, including economic, political, and social factors relating to the dispersal of libraries and collections in Europe and the Middle East, and the less savory aspects of the trade such as book-breaking, theft, and graft.

Proposals are due September 15, 2026, and can be submitted here.

CFP: Scottish Council on Archives Annual Conference 2026

ARCHIVES AND RECORDS AT THE HEART OF SOCIETY

Date: Tuesday, 3rd November 2026
Venue: Meeting Rooms, Tynecastle Park, Heart of Midlothian FC, McLeod St, Edinburgh EH11 2NL

Deadline for papers: Monday 21st September

The Scottish Council on Archives (SCA) is pleased to invite proposals for papers for its 2026 annual conference with the broad theme of ‘Archives and Records at the Heart of Society’. This year, we want to explore the essential role that archives and records play in underpinning democracy and accountability as well as inspiring creativity, wellbeing and community building.

The conference is an opportunity to highlight how archives and records management services underpin and support every almost aspect of society. Archives and records provide us with the evidence to challenge decisions and hold authorities to account. Archives and records contribute to vibrant and cohesive communities by telling the stories of places and the people who have lived there; to health and wellbeing, through use of archival material to help with a variety of conditions, including dementia; and to economic impact, by supporting the growing ancestral tourism market.

Whether you work in archives, records management, conservation, community archives, research, education or policy, we want to hear how your work is contributing to a more transparent, accountable, vibrant and healthier society.

We welcome proposals that may include (but are not limited to):

  • Archives and records as infrastructure for democracy, justice, and governance — case studies, advocacy work, or reflections on the importance and impact of the sector
  • Records management and accountability — examples of how good records practice has supported transparency, efficiency and/or public trust in institutions
  • Supporting the case for a future national strategy for archives and records
  • Inspiring and engaging with communities and/or promoting wellbeing
  • Responding to contemporary challenges and inquiries — engagement with public inquiries, emerging crises, or rapidly changing societal and technological issues such as AI
  • Demonstrating how archives and records support local and/or national economies
  • Case studies on any aspect of recordkeeping that speaks to the conference theme

Format:

  • 20-minute individual papers/presentations (in-person is preferred but a pre-recorded presentation will be considered)

Submission Details:

To submit your proposal, please email Marissa Trimble at m.trimble@scottisharchives.org.uk by the deadline of 21st September 2025. Your submission (maximum five hundred words) should include:

  • Presentation title and description
  • Name of your organisation (if applicable)
  • Your preference for presenting in person or prerecorded

Speakers will have their conference attendance fee and reasonable travel expenses covered. Please note that as a small charity, SCA is unable to offer speaker fees.

If you would like to discuss the event before submitting, please contact SCA Director, John Pelan at j.pelan@scottisharchives.org.uk

Deadline for papers: 21st September

Other Key Dates:

Bookings open: w/b 17th August

Programme decision made: 25th September

Full programme published: w/b 28th September

Conference: 3rd November

Call for Submissions: Archiving “Wrong” (Association of Canadian Archivists at University of British Columbia)

The ACA@UBC Conference team is thrilled to invite proposals for our February 2027 Conference that reflect on, expand on, or challenge the theme of “Archiving ‘Wrong.’” The conference provides a venue for archivists, librarians, records managers, information professionals, students, and all interested to share their research and experiential case studies.

Topics and prompts could include (but are not limited to)

  • Is there a “right” or “wrong” way to archive?
  • Instances when it may be necessary or beneficial to archive using methods that are not sanctioned by official standards or theory
  • Strategies for working with archival materials that record histories of wrongdoing or harm
  • Strategies for working with archival materials that could themselves cause harm
  • Making mistakes in the archives, or encountering mistakes made by others
  • Working in the archives without a recognized archival education; “rogue archives”
  • Archival projects undertaken by non-archivists 
  • Archiving “against” the theoretical canon
  • “Good enough” archiving: doing the best you can without enough resources/knowledge
  • Expanding archival user groups or challenging “traditional” notions of who archival users are

More about Archiving “Wrong”…

The professionalization of the archival field over the twentieth century came with the increasing entrenchment of a body of “canonical” archival theory and the consolidation of professional standards and practices. Not all archival practice followed suit, however, and scholars continue to identify a tension between theory and practice in the archival field.

This disconnect is also invoked when archivists reflect on the many situations in which their archival theory education is inadequate or even unsuitable in practice. Archives that employ workers without traditional training, that utilize nonstandard tools, supplies, and methods of processing, or that adopt alternative modes of stewardship, may not conform to sanctioned notions of what an “archive” is, but in doing it “wrong,” still perform a vital, and essentially archival function.

Archiving “wrong” could also refer to the task of preserving evidence of wrongdoing. While archives can function as instruments for accountability by maintaining records of “wrongs,” attendant discussions consider questions of the ideal ethics and standards for providing access to such materials, and identify the harm these records can still do, including to archivists themselves.

With growing political unrest and direct challenges to the ability of information organizations under governmental control to fulfill socially progressive mandates, archiving wrong may take on a new dimension, acknowledging the inability of governmentally-directed institutions to respond effectively to those whose needs they serve.

Some archivists have advanced strategies of archiving beyond the institution—and even against the law—as an important act of care and resistance. “Doing it wrong,” in this sense, might mean a willful rejection of what tradition has deemed the “right” way to archive.

Submission deadlines

September 18, 2026 — General proposal deadline (all non-student submissions)

October 16, 2026 — Student general proposal deadline *

November 27, 2026 — Student poster proposal deadline *

* The student deadline applies to all students at any College or University, including those in MAS, MASLIS, MLIS, MACL, and PhD programs. Students in other undergraduate or graduate programs are also welcome to submit for this deadline.

Full Call for Submissions

CFP: Between Big Data and Obsolescence: Born-Digital Sources, Contemporary History, and the Politics of Access

Ninth Conference on Digital History and Digital Humanities
Location: German Historical Institute Washington
Date: March 18–19, 2027
Deadline for Submissions: September 6, 2026

Co-convened with the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH), the Chair for Digital History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz, the Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim, and NFDI4Memory.

Digital technologies have fundamentally transformed the production, circulation, preservation, management, and interpretation of historical sources. Contemporary history is increasingly confronted with sources that are not simply digitized versions of analog records, but born-digital traces: emails, databases, social media posts, websites, digital images, messaging apps, spreadsheets, geodata, audiovisual files, code, metadata, and AI-generated content. These sources are unstable, fragile, platform-dependent, and often inaccessible both for research and even to the institutions that initially produced them. At the same time, they constitute crucial evidence for political, social, cultural, legal, and economic histories of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This conference takes the problem of born-digital sources as a central challenge for contemporary history and digital history alike. It asks how historians, archivists, information scientists, legal scholars, and digital humanities practitioners can work together to ensure that born-digital materials will be accessible as sources for research, while also developing tools and strategies that support their critical analysis.

One of the starting points for this conference in the German context is the position paper “NFDI4Memory: Damit wir auch zukünftig eine Vergangenheit haben” (Ensuring that the Future Has a Past). The authors argue for much closer cooperation between archival science and historical research in response to the changing conditions of the production of historical evidence. The mass availability of cataloging and metadata, they note, produces volumes of information that humans can no longer productively oversee, requiring new digital tools for enrichment, standardization, and analysis. Such tools are already being adopted in both archives and research communities. 

Comparative perspectives reveal that the preservation of born-digital records depends on distinct professional cultures, legal frameworks, and institutional responsibilities. In the United States, for example, records management, including electronic records management, has long served as an important bridge between administrators, archivists, and, potentially, historians. For government records, standards are shaped by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), including guidelines for official social media records, as well as by state archives. Private and non-governmental organizations often develop their own practices, resulting in a more uneven landscape of preservation, access, and accountability. Yet even where standards exist, major challenges remain: records managers may lack enforcement authority; institutions may lack funding, staffing, and technical infrastructures; and political priorities may undermine commitments to transparency and preservation. These problems point to broader international differences in how born-digital records are managed, preserved, and made available as future historical evidence. For more than two decades, scholars and practitioners have warned that overcoming divides between archivists, historians, records managers, and computer scientists is essential if we are to avoid the losses associated with a possible “digital dark age,” as Roy Rosenzweig already argued in 2003.

The challenges become even more urgent when we shift our focus from archives to producers of born-digital records, including government agencies, legislative bodies, and courts. Even more complex are challenges for institutions not subject to federal and state electronic records management requirements and guidelines, such as political parties, corporations, NGOs, and media organizations. Common problems include a lack of guidelines, a lack of enforcement abilities, a lack of staffing and training, and a lack of affordable platforms and infrastructures. Records disappear in deletion routines, remain locked in proprietary systems, or become inaccessible due to changing software environments, legal restrictions, platform obsolescence, or phaseouts. Whether in democratic or in authoritarian regimes, political decisions and developments influence whether governments are committed to ensuring transparency, oversight, and accountability governed by processes accountable to the public, or whether electronic traces of evidence may be repressed or destroyed. 

Born-digital records are therefore not merely a technical or archival concern. They are central to public accountability, democratic transparency, and the very possibility of writing contemporary history. Or as Sarah Weicksel, Executive Director of the American Historical Association (AHA), recently observed in an interview with the Max Weber Foundation’s “Weltweit vor Ort”: “Part of the question, then, is whether the American public and researchers from around the world will have access to a full and complete accounting of governmental actions and records, both through the executive branch and throughout other branches of government.”

The transformation process requires new skills and offers new opportunities for researchers. Traditional methods and working practices must expand, and new research questions and opportunities are emerging. The advent of born-digital data has given rise to entirely new categories of sources, raising new questions about data management and analytics, as well as enhanced methods of source criticism. Born-digital materials therefore force us to rethink traditional historical and archival training, and disciplinary and professional boundaries between historical scholars, information and data professionals, including archivists, digital humanists, and computer scientists. What does it require to preserve a database, a social media feed, a messaging thread, or a dynamic website? How can historians reconstruct the provenance, integrity, and context of digital records? What forms of digital source criticism are needed when documents are produced, modified, enriched, compressed, deleted, or algorithmically reordered by technical systems? How should we treat AI-generated images, texts, videos, and synthetic media as sources of contemporary history? And how can historians respond when politically significant digital records vanish before they ever become archival objects?

Submission Guidelines 

The conference aims to create a forum for sustained exchange between those who preserve born-digital materials and those who interpret them as historical sources. By bringing together archival, methodological, technical, and historiographical perspectives, we seek to ask not only how born-digital records can be saved, but also how they can be made meaningful for contemporary history. We especially welcome contributions that combine methodological reflection with concrete case studies, project presentations, or hands-on approaches.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Digital forensics and born-digital evidence
    How can methods from digital forensics help historians and memory workers identify, preserve, authenticate, and interpret born-digital materials? What can forensic approaches reveal about deleted files, metadata, file systems, version histories, timestamps, or chains of custody? How can such methods be made accessible for historical research without reducing sources to purely technical artifacts?
  • Digital source criticism 
    Born-digital sources require new forms of source criticism. Contributions may address provenance, authenticity, metadata, platform infrastructures, interface effects, algorithmic mediation, software dependencies, and the interpretive challenges of large-scale digital corpora. We are particularly interested in approaches that connect computational methods with hermeneutic interpretation. How can historians critically analyze sources that are too large, dynamic, or complex to be read through conventional methods alone?
  • Working with born-digital governmental sources
    Present your in-progress or finished project based on the aforementioned new types of sources. What institutional, technological, and methodological challenges did you encounter? Are there advantages to the sources’ genuinely digital nature, which is unburdened by the time-consuming and error-prone aspects of retrodigitization?
  • AI-generated content as sources of contemporary history
    Generative AI has rapidly become part of everyday communication, political campaigning, cultural production, journalism, administration, education, and memory work. How should historians approach AI-generated text, images, audio, video, or code as historical sources? What evidentiary status do synthetic media have? How can scholars distinguish, contextualize, and interpret AI-generated materials, especially when provenance is uncertain or deliberately obscured?
  • Democratic fragility, deletion, and political accountability
    Digital records are central to democratic accountability, yet they are also vulnerable to deletion, manipulation, privatization, and selective preservation. We invite papers that examine the disappearance of data by political actors, the fragility of administrative records, the destruction or withholding of digital evidence, and the challenges of documenting political decision-making in digital environments. How can historians, archives, journalists, and civil society organizations respond when records disappear before they can be preserved?
  • Archives, infrastructures, and national differences
    The preservation of born-digital sources depends on legal frameworks, archival mandates, technical infrastructures, institutional cultures, and funding structures. We welcome comparative perspectives on national, regional, and institutional differences in the collection, preservation, and accessibility of born-digital records. How do archives in different countries deal with government records, web archives, social media, email collections, or digital audiovisual materials? What can be learned from transnational comparison?
  • Ethics, law, and data protection
    Born-digital sources raise pressing ethical and legal questions. How can researchers balance public interest, privacy, consent, copyright, data protection, and the right to be forgotten? What responsibilities do historians have when working with personal digital traces, leaked materials, or sensitive administrative data?
  • Access, platforms, and the privatization of historical evidence
    Many born-digital sources are produced on commercial platforms that restrict access to researchers. Social media data, search engine results, messaging apps, and platform moderation records are often unavailable, incomplete, expensive, or legally difficult to obtain. Contributions may address the epistemological and political consequences of restricted data access. What kinds of contemporary history become impossible to write when platform data is inaccessible? What alternative methods, collaborations, or advocacy strategies are available?

We invite proposals in two formats:

  1. Individual presentations of 20 minutes. Papers may present case studies, methodological interventions, archival projects, theoretical reflections, or comparative perspectives.
  2. Workshops of 90 minutes for hands-on presentations of projects, tools, workflows, methods, or skills. Workshops may introduce participants to digital forensic methods, born-digital archival workflows, web archiving, metadata analysis, platform research, AI source criticism, or other practical approaches.

Proposals should include a title, an abstract of no more than 500 words (introducing state-of-the-art, research questions and objectives), a short biographical note of no more than 150 words, and an indication of the preferred format: workshop or individual presentation. Workshop proposals should also include a brief description of the intended structure and any technical requirements. Please submit your proposal to our conference platform https://app.smartsheet.eu/b/form/019e0327d9be7cc5b158b9b7cab2fc4f by September 6, 2026. 

Registration and Contact Information

Although we favor in-person attendance of participants and presenters, facilities for hybrid participation will be provided with the aim of making the event as inclusive as possible. Accommodations will be arranged and paid for by the conference organizers (for one presenter per paper or workshop). Participants will make their own travel arrangements; funding subsidies for travel are available upon request for selected scholars, especially those who might not otherwise be able to attend the workshop, including junior scholars and scholars from universities with limited resources. For further information regarding the event’s format and conceptualization, please contact Daniel Burckhardt, burckhardt@ghi-dc.org. For questions about logistics (travel and accommodation), please contact our event coordinator Nicola Hofstetter, hofstetter-phelps@ghi-dc.org.

Conference Committee

  • Daniel Burckhardt, GHI Washington
  • Andreas Fickers, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH)
  • Philipp Gassert, Chair for Contemporary History at the University of Mannheim
  • Katharina Hering, GHI Washington
  • Torsten Hiltmann, Chair for Digital History at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
  • Jana Keck, GHI Washington
  • Atiba Pertilla, GHI Washington
  • Thorsten Wübbena, Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz

Contact Information

For further information regarding the event’s format and conceptualization, please contact Daniel Burckhardt, burckhardt@ghi-dc.org. For questions about logistics (travel and accommodation), please contact our event coordinator Nicola Hofstetter, hofstetter-phelps@ghi-dc.org.

Contact Email

burckhardt@ghi-dc.org

URL: https://www.ghi-dc.org/events/event/date/between-big-data-and-obsolescence-born-digital-sources-contemporary-history-and-the-politics-of-access