ACA@UBC 13th Annual International Symposium

As an online event, attendees and presenters will be coming from many different places around the world. However, we wish to expressly acknowledge that the UBC iSchool is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people.

Theme: Transforming Archival Education

How does someone learn to be a good archivist, and what does being a “good archivist” mean? Terry Cook (2000) advocates bridging the perceived divide between theory and practice by challenging “the imperative of absolutes” in archival education, while Bergis Jules (2016) calls on archivists to center people over professional “neutrality” in order to combat the harms of a historical record “filled with silences, absences, and distortions, mostly affecting the legacies of the less privileged.” Anne Gilliland et al. (2008) suggest that integrating Indigenous knowledge and practices into archival pedagogy is necessary to prevent archival education from potentially acting as a neocolonial force. Given these assessments of archival education and the profession, we ask: can archival education support the transformation of the archival profession and break down barriers to justice? How can it do so?

In the 13th annual ACA@UBC Seminar and Symposium, we will push the boundaries of our understanding of archival education through redefining archives, dismantling academic gatekeeping, and challenging Euro-centric models of archival education and practice. During two days of virtual participatory discussions and panels with leaders in the field, attendees will challenge and broaden their understanding of who archival education can serve and how.

Although the event will be online, we will follow a similar format to previous years with one seminar and one symposium day.

The seminar will take place on Thursday, April 28th, 2022. The seminar will consist of interactive panels with the topics:

• Researching and working in Archives: Communicating with non-archivists
• Decolonization of archival practices and education
• Preparing for emotional archives
• Un-learning archival pedagogy

The symposium will take place on Friday, April 29th, 2022.

The symposium will feature formal presentations on the following themes:

• Student perspectives on archival education
• Teaching non-Western archives
• Teaching tech in archives
• Teaching community and personal archives

For more information, please also see the event website and ACA@UBC website.

Accessibility notes: Live captioning will be provided on both days of the event.

Additional notes: As this will be a webinar format, there is no way for attendee audio or video to be captured. That said, please note that this webinar will be recorded and stored on the cloud storage of the Association of Canadian archivist's Zoom account for 90 days. A link will be provided to conference attendees.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the ACA@UBC at aca.slais@gmail.com