Call for Lightning Talks at STHC Annual Section Meeting

The Science, Technology, and Health Care Section is seeking members to present brief lightning talks during their Annual Section Meeting, May 26th from 2-3.30p EST. Lightening talks are brief, 5-10 minute presentations designed to share ideas, projects, initiatives, successes, and opportunities with the larger section membership.

Talks may also include calls for participation in research, surveys, partnerships, or introductions to tools or concepts you have found compelling in your work and feel inspired to share.

All Section Meetings are conducted virtually. Presenters are welcome – but not required – to create a brief deck of slides (less than 5) to accompany their talk. Presenters and attendees are not required to register for SAA to attend.

If you are interested, contact STHC Section Co-chair Allison Fischbach (afischbach@jhu.edu) by April 6.

CFP: Reimagining the Archive in the Post-Truth Era

“Reimagining the Archive in the Post-Truth Era: An International Interdisciplinary Conference” on 29 June–3 July 2026 at Eden Grove Complex, Rhodes University

Proposal Deadline (Second Call): 15 April 2026

In an age of distortion and falsification, can the archive claim any mandate to speak the truth?

With present-day global socio-political and technological developments, we are living in a time where expertise is undermined and the always-tenuous boundaries between “truth” and “fiction” are increasingly blurred. More than ever before, the archive has emerged as both a site of authority and a field of dispute.

The “post-truth” era – characterised by the rise of misinformation, historical denialism, and digital echo chambers reinforced by social media algorithms – demands a fundamental rethinking of how archives are imagined, constructed, accessed, and interpreted. This conference invites historians, archivists, anthropologists, musicologists, artists, environmental scientists, natural scientists, information systems professionals, scholars and practitioners from a wide range of other disciplines, activists, and publishers, media practitioners and content creators to explore the evolving role of the archive in shaping collective memory, public trust, and historical knowledge in the post-truth era. What does it mean to “reimagine the archive” when truth itself is increasingly contested and under siege? How can archives resist manipulation, amplify marginalized voices, and act as tools for critical engagement in an age of epistemic crisis? Do they have a responsibility to extend their reach, actively sharing information rather than serving as ivory-tower repositories of research? We welcome papers and panels that engage with topics including but not limited to:

The politicization and weaponization of historical records
Archives and other repositories in the age of misinformation and conspiracy theories
Forgery, authenticity, and the ethics of archival evidence
Archives and genealogical fictions
The rise of “counter-archives”
Digitization, AI, and the reconfiguration of archival authority
Disinformation, deepfakes, and the future of historical and scientific truth
Post-Colonial, decolonial and anticolonial archival methodologies
Silences, absences, and erasures in traditional archives
Archival justice and truth-telling in transitional societies
Creative, speculative, and performative archival practices
The role of curation in archive building
Content management strategies for building spaces of truth
Policy design and legislative frameworks
The role of archives in repatriation and social justice
Epistemologies, ontologies and taxonomies
The role of print media in the post-truth era
Rights, responsibilities and the ethical use of information in the era of big data
Self-curation, social media and algorithm generated archives.

We are especially interested in submissions that critically engage with interdisciplinary approaches, including digital humanities, media studies, cultural memory, fine and performing arts, public history, environmental and natural sciences, ecological challenges, and archival management and practice (including scientific archives and repositories such as herbaria).

Alternative presentation formats such as performative works, film screenings and/or the display of artefacts may be considered depending on the technical requirements and our ability to accommodate them within the programme and venue.

It is envisaged that a selection of papers will be peer reviewed and submitted to an accredited peer reviewed journal for publication. Other peer reviewed publication possibilities are currently under consideration.

Submission Guidelines

Please submit a 300-word abstract and a brief biography (100 to 150 words) by 15 April 2026 to archiveconference@ru.ac.za. Panel proposals (3 to 5 presenters) are welcome and should include a panel title, a short overview (250 to 300 words), and individual paper abstracts. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 30 April 2026. For any queries, please contact the organiser, Prof Alan Kirkaldy, at archiveconference@ru.ac.za. Updates and additional information will be available at the conference website once it is up and running.

Costs

Professionals (for example, Full-time Academics in employment and Representatives of Organisations) R5000.00
Postgraduate/Postdoc Students and Unemployed R3500.00
Single Day Professionals R1000
Single Day Postgraduate/Postdoc Students and Unemployed R500.00
On-Campus Accommodation: 4 Nights Bed and Breakfast Accommodation @R700 per night R2100.00
Off-Campus Accommodation: Information will follow once the website is up and running.
Transport – Shuttle from Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) to Makhanda (Grahamstown) Single: R500.00 Return R1000.

Workshops

The first day of the conference will be devoted to a workshop dealing with the whole process of building a digital archive presented by Africa Media Online. Participation in this highly informative and useful workshop is included in the cost of registration for the conference.

National Festival of the Arts

The conference coincides with this annual Festival. Negotiations are currently in progress to secure cooperative agreements, including discounted or complementary tickets to selected productions. Further details will follow.

Contact Information

Prof Emeritus Alan Kirkaldy, Rhodes University

Contact Email

a.kirkaldy@ru.ac.za

CFP: “What’s the Matter with Description? Form, Practice, and Material Culture” (April 2-3, 2027)

Call for Papers

University of Delaware’s 8th CMCS Conference in Material Culture

April 2-3, 2027

“What’s the Matter with Description? Form, Practice, and Material Culture”

Keynote Speaker

SUSAN STEWART

(Princeton University)

Long considered a distinctive concern for literary specialists, description in fact informs all the arts and humanities and, no doubt, the natural sciences as well. Any object of inquiry—from texts to paintings to other modes of representation or from raw materials to consumer goods or from stars to dark matter—requires some level of description. While description has been and remains a prominent element of reflective thought, its valence has fluctuated over time, with some thinkers finding description to be paralyzing or pedantic, extraneous, misleading, even deceptive, and generally unwelcome. Others, reflecting on description specifically in relation to material culture studies, theorized description as a kind of second substance through which we make sense of objects, “reality reconstituted,” as T.H. Breen put it, whereas Jules Prown thought that textual description was, inescapably, the thing itself. Such characterizations are all the more promising today for cross-disciplinary conversations as scholars from various fields extend their inquiries to material facets of their respective subjects and, at the same time, parallel attempts to engage material culture within any one specialty provide methodological bridges between disciplines since all such efforts inevitably rest upon a studied translation of matter into language.

The symposium, “What’s the Matter with Description,” welcomes submissions from all disciplines concerned with description and the way it interacts with material culture. Papers should offer new perspectives on questions regarding the powers and practices of description, including–perhaps especially–those times when we take descriptions for granted and let them stand unexamined. For instance, how does the description of an object inform and transform what can be grasped of it? Or, is there a uniquely material culture approach to description, one that takes material agency seriously and presumes an iterative relationship between describer and described?

Topics may include (but are not limited to) to one or more of the following themes:

• Histories of Description

Ekphrasis, Realism, Mimesis, Ut Pictura Poesis and the Imitation of Nature, Word and Image, Drama and Performance, Speech v. Writing, etc.

• Missions of Description

Expeditions, Experiments, First Descriptive Encounters, Taxonomies and Classification, Collecting and Archiving, Laws and other Codes, Memorialization, Education

• Protocols of Description

The Camera Eye, Impressionistic Description, Thick Description, Processual Description, Translation, Rules, Textbooks, Witness and Meditation, Memory and Remembering

• Media of Description

Oral Traditions, Personal Records, Print, Visual Media, Diagrams, Schematics and Maps, Photography and Film, Audio Media, Data Visualization

• Ethics of Description

Observational Objectivity, Phenomenological and Hermeneutic Approaches, Colonial and Imperial Gaze, Reparative Description, Politics of Description

Please send abstracts of max. 300 words, with brief CV of no more than two pages, by July 15, 2026 to Martin Brückner (mcb@udel.edu) and Sandy Isenstadt (isnt@udel.edu). The conference takes place on April 2-3, 2027, at the University of Delaware and the Winterthur Museum, DE.

Contact Information

Martin Brückner

Director of Winterthur Program in American Material Culture

University of Delaware

Newark, DE 19716

Contact Email

mcb@udel.edu

CFP: IASA–BAAC 2026 Joint Conference: Archives in Times of Peace and War

Archives in Times of Peace and War: Safeguarding Audiovisual Memory, Identity, and Authenticity

Audiovisual archives preserve the voices, images, and sounds that define our shared humanity—but these same records are among the first casualties when a crisis strikes. From the Baltic region to Ukraine and beyond, archives have become both witnesses and targets in conflicts that test the limits of cultural resilience, digital security, and professional ethics.

This joint conference of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA) and the Baltic Audiovisual Archival Council (BAAC) invites reflections on how we protect both people and collections before, during, and after conflict.

How do we prepare in peace for the realities of war? How do we preserve the authenticity of digital records in an era of AI-generated misinformation? And how do we ensure that the archives of vulnerable and marginalized communities—especially queer, feminist, and immigrant archives—are not erased when visibility becomes dangerous?

We invite proposals that explore theory, practice, and lived experience across the full spectrum of archival work: from technical preservation to ethical frameworks, from front-line documentation to digital forensics, from regional cooperation to global solidarity.

Conference Sub-Themes

Preparedness in Peace: Building Resilience Before Crisis

Integrating risk management and disaster planning into archival practice
Regional cooperation, mutual aid, and safe-haven networks
Training and simulation for emergency digitization and continuity of access

When War Comes: Protecting People, Collections, and Data

Evacuation vs. protection in place—decision frameworks under pressure
Staff safety, psychological resilience, and remote coordination
Encryption, offsite replication, and secure data handover

Targeted Community Memory: Queer, Feminist, Immigrant Archives Under Threat

Strategies for concealment, coded metadata, and distributed preservation
Community-based archives as resistance and survival
Ethics of visibility and consent under repressive regimes

The Archive as Witness

Audiovisual evidence in documenting war crimes and human-rights abuses
Chain of custody, verification, and legal admissibility of AV records
Preserving dignity and consent in survivor testimonies

Digital Authenticity in the Age of AI

Verification and chain of custody for audiovisual evidence
Deepfakes, metadata forensics, and watermarking
Building institutional capacity for trust and provenance validation

Technical Resilience and Preservation Refresh Strategies

Managing LTO transitions, file-format obsolescence, and checksum integrity
Balancing cloud, hybrid, and on-prem storage models under duress
Sustainable refresh cycles and energy-aware digital preservation planning

Reconstruction, Repatriation, and Healing

Restoring collections and infrastructure post-conflict
Reconnecting displaced archives and digital repatriation initiatives
The role of archives in reconciliation, justice, and cultural renewal

Learning from the Past, Planning for the Future

Lessons from conflict-zone archives worldwide
Updating archival standards and conventions for an era of uncertainty
Reimagining the ethics of stewardship in a volatile digital landscape

Transnational Collaboration and Shared Stewardship

Cross-border partnerships for digital preservation and capacity-building
Shared infrastructures for validation, metadata exchange, and redundancy
Diplomatic and legal frameworks for international cooperation in crisis
Collective advocacy for the protection of cultural heritage under threat

As a membership organization, IASA is open to all. We do ask participants to acknowledge and adhere to our code of conduct. We hope you’ll join us this year in Vilnius, to share your stories & lessons learned.

Please submit your proposal in English, by completing the form below, before April 13th 2026.

Description of Formats

Peer-Reviewed Contributions

All contributions must report on novel efforts. We do appreciate an honest and investigative view on your process, learning from failures matters as much as, if not more than, celebrating success! While we welcome service providers to tell their story, we will prioritize presentations that include the story of an implementation from the patron’s perspective. Should you choose to participate from a distance, please kindly indicate so on the form. To support a collaborative conference atmosphere, we will prioritize a critical number of on-premises presentations.

Presentations

We invite two kinds of presentations:

Long presentations (60 mins. including Q&A) must be novel, reporting on previously unpublished work.
Short presentations (30 mins. including Q&A) focus on new challenges and work in progress.

Panel sessions

Proposals for thematic panels to be held during the main conference program. Panel proposals will be judged on the merits of the proposal and relevance for the expected audience.

Please detail the subject and desired outcomes for the panel discussion as well as the proposed panelists in your proposal. The Program Committee may identify individual thematic papers and invite submitters to form a panel or invite panelists to join a thematic panel. We encourage and prioritize panel proposals and panelists that reflect our diversity, equity and inclusion commitment to broaden subject matter content. A respectful debate panel structure on a theme or topic is also very much encouraged.

Posters

Posters are ideal for reporting on emerging issues and on works in progress. Your abstract should clearly describe the topic to be presented and states its unique contribution to the field. Posters should aim to improve knowledge, show new technical capabilities, or share solutions and experience in the field.

Workshops and Tutorials

We welcome proposals for workshops and/or tutorials that address the conference themes for IASA.

Workshops are intended to be hands-on and interactive, and proposers are free to decide how to structure and design them. Workshops usually involve the development of a skill, related to the topic covered in the workshop. While workshops involve more hands-on learning, they should also allow for discussion, interaction and debate on the topic of the class.

Tutorials should focus on a single topic and designate whether it aims at an introductory level or an expert level. Tutorials allow time for group discussion of content and debate on the themes and concepts covered in the class. Tutorials need not be hands-on. Proposers are free to decide how to structure them.

Process

The selection of presentations will be made by June 1st by the Programme Committee. The presenters will receive their notification via email after this selection. The Programme Committee reserves the right to propose to the candidates to present under the Conference or the Forum parts of the event and/or in a different format.

Please note: All presenters will be required to register before the early bird deadline.

Submission form.

CFP: Upgrade: Enhancing Library Services with Technology (Virtual – November 12th & 13th, 2026)

Submit your idea today for Upgrade 2026! Upgrade will be held virtually November 12-13 2026. Conference sessions can take one of several formats, and you are welcome to submit multiple proposals!

Lecture presentation: 45-minute presentation + 15 min Q&A
Panel Discussion: 2-4 presenters focused on one big topic and sharing their experience
Lightning talk: 5-8 minute mini presentation/demonstration

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

OER
Artificial intelligence
Virtual reality
Cybersecurity and data privacy
Media labs and makerspaces
Social media
Media literacy
Podcasts
Digital collections
Equity, accessible and inclusive technology

Selected lecture and panel sessions will receive one complimentary conference registration. Selected lightning talk and roundtable presenters will receive a discounted conference rate. For more information, visit the conference website.

CFP: FIAT/IFTA World Conference

FIAT/IFTA World Conference 2026
São Paolo, Brazil – October 6-9

Deadline: March 24, 2026

Screen Memories in Dialogue: Learning from Diversity Memórias Audiovisuais em Diálogo: Aprendendo com a Diversidade

Media archives operate today in an environment shaped by constant transformation. Technological change, evolving media ecosystems, shifting institutional frameworks and growing social expectations challenge how audiovisual memory is preserved, managed, accessed and understood. In this context, archives are not only repositories of content, but active spaces where knowledge, practices and perspectives meet.

Under the theme Screen Memories in Dialogue: Learning from Diversity, the FIAT/IFTA World Conference invites professionals, researchers and practitioners to reflect on audiovisual archives as spaces of exchange, collaboration and mutual learning. Dialogue is understood here as a working principle: between institutions and communities, between regions, between professional cultures, and between past experiences and future challenges.

Learning from diversity means recognising that valuable knowledge emerges from different contexts, scales and traditions of practice. Across the FIAT/IFTA community, archives operate under highly diverse institutional, technological and cultural conditions. These differences are not obstacles to be overcome, but sources of insight that can enrich global archival thinking, inspire adaptation and foster more resilient and inclusive practices.

The conference seeks to create a shared space where experiences from broadcasters, film archives, sound archives, community initiatives, research environments and hybrid institutions can be discussed on equal terms. By bringing together perspectives from Ibero-America and beyond, the conference encourages contributions that highlight situated practices, regional innovations and collaborative approaches, while engaging with broader questions relevant to the international audiovisual archival field.

Full Call for Papers

CFP: ThriveLib 2026 conference – Reimagining Library Culture

ThriveLib 2026 is now accepting proposals.

Our theme, Reimagining Library Culture (Together), is grounded in the belief that joy and sustainability cannot exist without safety, dignity, and care.

We are intentionally seeking proposals that center the experiences and voices of people from historically and currently underrepresented groups in librarianship, and that name how systems of oppression shape library work and well-being.

ThriveLib 2026 is taking place in a moment of widespread instability that is shaping the lives and work of many library workers. Some are carrying far greater risk, grief, and exhaustion than others. We invite proposals that acknowledge these realities and explore how library systems and expectations can either deepen harm or offer meaningful support.

We welcome proposals that:

· Speak from lived experience

· Name harm without requiring solutions

· Explore collective, capacity-aware approaches to change

You do not need institutional backing, polished outcomes, or traditional credentials to submit.

Speaker honorariums and free registration are provided.

Proposals are due by 12:00 noon Central time on Friday April 10, 2026. CFP details and submission link: https://www.thrivelib.com/2026-cfpThe Contact email – ThriveLib@gmail.com

CFP: Children’s Tesmonies. Unveiling historical and art-historical archives

Conference at the University of Bonn/Center for Slavery and Dependency Studies (BCDSS) Oct 22nd -24th 2026

PDF of full CFP

Children around the world witness brutal violence: in wars, through displacement or migration, and increasingly also through climate disasters. At the same time, children worldwide are threatened by physical violence and experience it as emotional and psychological violence (distress). Children leave behind a wide range of testimonies of their experiences of violence, which are only belatedly becoming the focus of research and children are thus becoming increasingly important as witnesses to violence. This shift in the importance attached to children as witnesses affected by extreme violence has been aided by a revaluation of children as future adults. The planned conference aims to complement this contemporary observation with a historical dimension, bringing different approaches into dialogue with one another. Understanding children as witnesses inevitably raises methodological issues. These have been far less widely addressed in historical research than in law and psychology.[1] For this reason, the conference will be fullheartedly interdisciplinary and aims at visual, material, archeological and textual archives of childhood, trauma, and violence.

[1] fundamental: Gail S. Goodman, ‘Children’s Testimony in Historical Perspective’, Journal of Social Issues, 40.2 (1984), pp. 9–31; Yuille, John C.: THE SYSTEMATIC ASSESSMENT OF CHILDREN’S TESTIMONY. In: Canadian Psychology/Psychologie Canadienne, 1988, 29:3, S. 247-263.

Contact Information

The conference is held by Claudia Jarzebowski and Birgit U. Muench, both of the UNiversity of Bonn, at the University of Bonn’s Center for Slavery and Dependency Studies.

Contact Email: claudia.jarzebowski@uni-bonn.de

URL: https://www.dependency.uni-bonn.de/en/about-us/people/principal-investigators/claudia-jarzebowski

CFP: Graduate Student Paper/Poster Proposal, SAA Annual Conference

To submit a paper or poster proposal, please complete the proposal form below no later than March 30. (Proposals received after this date will not be considered.) E-mailed submissions or submissions in any other format will not be accepted.

SAA encourages broad participation in the ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2026. All presenters including speakers, session chairs, commentators, and poster presenters are limited to participating in one session. Please alert the 2026 Student Program Subcommittee if you have agreed to participate in another accepted session.

If presenters wish to attend any portion of the 2026 Annual Meeting, they will need to secure institutional or personal funding to register for the conference. SAA is not able to consider complimentary registration for student presenters.

Proposals are due on March 30.

Proposals received after this date will not be considered. If you have any questions, please contact conference@archivists.org.

Submit a proposal.

CFP: Visual Resources Association 2026 Annual Conference

The Visual Resources Association invites proposals for our 2026 Annual Conference, to be held virtually October 5–9th.

The submission deadline is March 29, 2026.

Submit a proposal.

We encourage you to reflect on your experiences, ideas, and expertise! We welcome submissions from VRA members and non-members, seasoned attendees and first-timers, as well as from students, independent scholars, professionals in any stage of their career, and retirees.

Please direct any questions about the submission process to VRA’s Directors for Events & Initiatives at initiatives@vraweb.org.

Important Dates

February 18: Call for Proposals opens
March 29: Call for Proposals closes
On or around May 15: Notification of final decisions
On or around June 8: Tentative programs released

Proposal Types
Individual Papers: Individual presentations that may highlight new research, a case study, or an innovative idea relevant to the VRA community. Papers should aim to provide attendees with fresh tools, strategies, or inspiration they can apply in their own practice. Grouped thematically with other individual papers into moderated sessions with a total run time of 60 to 90 minutes, including a Q&A. Maximum of 2 presenters per paper.

Lightning Talks: Short (5–7 minute) individual presentations. Lightning talks provide attendees the opportunity to hear about a range of innovative projects or ideas from a broad group of colleagues in a short amount of time. Grouped into sessions that may or may not be themed. Maximum of 1 presenter per lightning talk.

Pre-coordinated Panels: Moderated sessions typically consisting of 3–4 presenters speaking for 15 minutes each, followed by a Q&A. Panels provide attendees with diverse perspectives on a single topic, a comparison of tools or methods, or a number of case studies on related subjects. If proposing a panel, it is your responsibility to fill the time with presenters. It is not necessary to identify all potential presenters before submitting your proposal, but conference planners will need names of presenters several months prior to the conference.

Workshops: An opportunity to teach and explore a specific tool, technique, workflow, or concept relevant to the VRA community. Workshops are generally 90 minutes to 3 hours, but can be longer if needed. Maximum of 2 instructors.

Meetings: Committees, chapters, and special interest group meetings, typically an hour in length.

Tours: A virtual tour of your institution or other place of interest. This might include a collections show and tell; a demonstration of your digital asset management, website, or other platform; or a meet and greet with your workplace colleagues.

Social event / other: Be creative! We welcome new ideas in this virtual format. Think along the lines of virtual yoga lessons, arts & crafts time, trivia session, lunch talks, happy hour, etc.

VRA 2026 Virtual Whiteboard
Interested in engaging with the VRA community to develop or refine a proposal or suggest ideas? VRA’s Programming Committee (formerly known as the Education Committee) has set up a Virtual Whiteboard where you can brainstorm collaboratively about potential papers, panels, special interest/user groups, workshops, meetings, and poster sessions.

Reach out to the Programming Committee co-chairs at programming@vraweb.org if you have any questions about the whiteboard.

Suggested Topics
We welcome proposals on a wide range of topics related to visual resources, including case studies, lessons learned (both successes and challenges), practical applications, innovative methods, ongoing projects, ethical considerations, research, and pedagogical practices.

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