Announcements

The program committee and organizers invite paper proposals to the 9th International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (ICHORA). ICHORA 9 will be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. from October 29 to 31, 2020. Submit paper proposals to ICHORA2020@umich.edu by March 30, 2020. For more information, please visit the conference website at https://www.ichora2020.com. 

ICHORA 9 will focus on Archives and the Digital World. Digital technologies have been in use for over 70 years and were, in fact, late additions to a whirlwind of new record-making and -keeping technologies that began a century before that transformed the creation, transmission, preservation, representation, and interpretation of records and archives. Digital technologies mediate how the past is documented, remembered, and commemorated. Digital recordkeeping and society are mutually constituted, a relationship that is far-reaching and challenging to predict. Despite claims of ubiquity, digital infrastructures are culturally, linguistically and historically specific, often maintaining and reinscribing longstanding power imbalances that have favoured some groups and marginalized others; but sometimes affording new opportunities for resistance to the mainstream, used by subcultures to advance their survivance, and by other groups to maintain cultural diversity.

The Program Committee seeks contributions to ICHORA 9 that will stimulate critical reflection on the evolution and development of records, archives, archival forms/genres and archival institutions in relation to the histories of digital technologies and ongoing digital transformations. Examinations of the relationship of digital technologies to indigenous communities and knowledge systems, the use of digital technologies to enhance equality or further reinforce inequality for marginalized and underrepresented communities, as well as the deployment of digital technologies in archives of resistance, activism and resurgence, are especially welcome. Areas of focus and possible topics may include: 

• Archives, digital studies, media studies and histories of the digital; 
• Non-digital media precursors of digital record making and keeping technologies;
• Future(s) of electronic incunabula;
• Digitization, surrogacy, and materiality of digital objects (and the reimagined future of the non-digital archive);
• Evolution of access and preservation infrastructures, systems, platforms and analytical tools including the cloud, emulation and data visualizations; 
• Development of standards, guidelines and approaches for digital recordkeeping and digital preservation;
• Algorithmic appraisal, acquisition, and description, including building and sustaining social media archives, and approaches to their analysis and use; 
• Histories of digital recordkeeping including punched card preservation, EDRMS, Web archiving, blockchain, and whole platform preservation;
• Recordkeeping technologies in surveillance and policing (and how this has affected marginalized communities);
• Postcolonialism and decolonization, particularly the role of the digital in reflecting alternative ideological approaches to archives and records; 
• Intersection of digital archiving, maintenance work, and historical trajectory of digital archival labor; and
• Implications of the digital for copyright, privacy, ownership, trust and ethics.

Submission and Proposal Deadline: Proposals for 20-minute papers are invited. Abstracts of 450-500 words and a short bio should be sent to ICHORA2020@umich.edu by March 30, 2020. We will advise acceptance by May 8, 2020. Following the conference, presenters may be invited to submit their contributions for a peer-reviewed publication.

Previous ICHORA conferences took place in Toronto (2003), Amsterdam (2005; 2015), Boston (2007), Perth (2008), London (2010), Austin (2012), and Melbourne (2018).

• Ricardo L. Punzalan, Program Committee Chair, University of Michigan, U.S.A.
• Greg Bak, University of Manitoba, Canada
• Iyra Buenrostro-Cabbab, University of the Philippines Diliman, Philippines
• Jenny Bunn, University College London, U.K.
• Stanley Griffin, University of the West Indies, Jamaica
• Anthea Josias, University of the Western Cape, South Africa 
• James Lowry, University of Liverpool, U.K. 
• Heather MacNeil, University of Toronto, Canada
• Gillian Oliver, Monash University, Australia
• Valentina Rojas Rojo, National Archives of Chile, Chile
• Eric Stoykovich, Trinity College, U.S.A. 
• Naya Sucha-xaya, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand
• Tonia Sutherland, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa, U.S.A.
• Ciaran Trace, University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A.