Intuiting the archive

We are researchers who find ourselves in archives, without formal training. Most of the time we depend on serendipity, luck, and intuition. How can we learn from historians to infer from archives without neglecting their colonial politics and epistemologies, silences, and ethical quandaries? How can we sensitise our methods, forward a decolonial agenda, and improve the stories we tell?

Join speakers Tiffany Shellam (History, Deakin University), Ann Genovese (Melbourne Law School), Alessandro Antonello (History, University of Melbourne) and Louise Doyle (National Archives of Australia) to discuss the challenges of archival research.

Registration: please email Sam Balaton-Chrimes and Uma Kothari to register.

The Ethical Sensibilities Occasional Workshop Series is a site for scholars, students, activists, intellectuals, and others who care about the issues our Network focuses on and to talk openly about the murky ethical terrain of global North/South relationships. We strive to create opportunities for debriefing, digesting, discussing and dissecting the challenges researchers face when crossing these boundaries (in either direction), and building meaningful interpersonal relationships while also speaking back to bigger issues, political, economic, social and intellectual. We unapologetically deal with matters of the heart, as well as matters of the mind. The Series is convened by Dr Sam Balaton-Chrimes (Deakin University).

The Institute of Postcolonial Studies is an independent venue for the exploration of postcolonial scholarship, politics, and creative practice. Please consider supporting the Institute by becoming a member.

Intuiting the archive is jointly supported by the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH, University of Melbourne), the Critical Development Studies Network, and the Institute of Postcolonial Studies.