This workshop seeks to examine refigured archiving work currently undertaken in Africa as well as to learn more about the ways in which this refigures scholarship. Introducing the concept of the ‘archival commons’, it particularly aims at studying diverse forms of archiving as common, communal or communing practices that have significant effects on both preservation and critical historical work.

Practicing the Archival Commons: Publics, Power and Perspectives

In 2002, scholars and archival practitioners, mainly thinking from and working in South Africa, published Refiguring the Archive amidst the transformative imperative against apartheid and the colonial past. The book’s authors argued that archival conceptualization, practice and use all “required transformation” (Hamilton et al. 2002, 7). The publication turns our attention to the convergence of a range of developments in the twenty-first century including a broader archival turn across academic disciplines, a transnational professional reexamination of archival praxis, the rapid expansion and acceleration of digital technologies, and public demands to address the past and its discontents.

Against this backdrop, this workshop seeks to examine refigured archiving work currently undertaken in Africa as well as to learn more about the ways in which this refigures scholarship. Introducing the concept of the ‘archival commons’, it particularly aims at studying diverse forms of archiving as common, communal or communing practices that have significant effects on both preservation and critical historical work. Rooted in the broader notion of commons as shared cultural, informational, and natural resources, the ‘archival commons’ contrast an understanding of archives as static, institutionally controlled spaces. The concept aligns with decolonial and liberatory approaches by envisioning archives as dynamic, participatory spaces governed collectively by archivists, researchers, and communities.

The goals of the workshop are twofold. First, the workshop aims to assess the making, workings, functioning, and meanings of archives which accentuate cooperation and reciprocity on the one hand and work towards greater justice, if not compensation, for past injustices or practices of silencing on the other. Second, acknowledging that archives are characterized by practices and their aliveness, it aims to study the affordances and limitations of common-based approaches to archiving for history and other academic disciplines and to explore their implications for research methodologies more generally. To meet these objectives, the workshop is planned as an event that includes both practical and theoretical elements and reflections. On the one hand, it is comprised of visits to, and active engagement with, archival projects in and around Stellenbosch University and from other parts of the African continent. On the other hand, it invites researchers, especially early in their careers, and practitioners in history, archival studies, heritage, postcolonial studies and anthropology to think of the ‘archival commons’ together and investigate it as a way of engaging the past. Therefore, we invite proposals for papers that address the ‘archival commons’ with reference to one or more of the following themes and questions:

Publics

– How does archiving as a common, communal or communing practice contribute to transformative discourses and which publics are involved? What are the roles of trained archivists and professional identities in this context?
– What social and cultural work is performed by the ‘archival commons’ in general and by specific archival projects in particular? How can/do/should scholars consider this in their engagement with such projects?
– What do the ‘’archival commons’ create? Who makes, sustains and takes care of them? Which (digital) infrastructures do they need? How do digital infrastructures enable or limit their possibilities?
– How do or can the ‘archival commons’ or specific common archival initiatives contribute to refiguring social, economic, political, environmental and digital relations?

Power

– How does power operate in the ‘archival commons’? In how far does the ‘archival commons’ constitute a possibility to reconsider power relations in current archival practice?
– What renders archival labor visible or invisible? How do practitioners preserve their archival work in precarious conditions? How do they refigure archival practices such as selection, description, preservation, and access considering critiques of archival conventions?
– How do archival practitioners engage with digitization and the new conventions, challenges, (in)equalities and possibilities it brings about?
– How do archival projects deal with difference, conflict and difficult histories? Considering that archiving documents involves more than ‘simply’ preserving them –by adding value through appraisal, processing, description and – how is value created and maintained?
– What cooperations and disjunctures have formed between archival professionals, researchers, and ‘subjects’?

Perspectives

– Which epistemological and social perspectives have been, are being or could be opened by archival projects in the twenty-first century?
– How does common archiving impact knowledge production and in which societal fields? How does it impact research practices and methodologies?
– What material conditions, relationships and understandings are needed or desired to practice and sustain the ‘archival commons’ as a socially responsible and epistemologically meaningful project?

Please send a proposal of no more than 300 words and a one-page CV by June 5, 2026 to archivalcommonsworkshop@gmail.com. Participants will be notified by the end of August 2026. The workshop will be held in English and focus on the discussion of pre-circulated papers of about 3,000 words (submission due by December 15, 2026). In case of submissions with more than one author, we will only be able to accommodate one person per proposal due to budgetary restrictions. Please indicate in your proposal who should be considered as the main applicant.

The workshop is organized in the framework of the “Programme Point Sud” of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and Goethe University Frankfurt. Costs for travel and accom-modation will be covered.

Contact Email

archivalcommonsworkshop@gmail.com