Programme
Royal Society of Edinburgh
Scottish Executive Arts & Humanities Awards
Investigating the Archive project

The Philosophy of the Archive
Hilton Caledonian Hotel, Edinburgh, 10-11 April 2008

Thursday 10 April
8.30 - 9.30Registration and coffee
9.30 - 9.45Welcome and Introduction
Professor Nicholas Davey, Dean, School of Humanities, University of Dundee
Keynote speaker
9.45 - 10.45Terry Cook, University of Manitoba, Canada
Along the grain: assumptions and voices of archivists from the inside
10.45 - 11.15 Coffee
Session 1: Recording and Representation
11.15 - 12.45Geoffrey Yeo, University College London,
Records and representations
Jim Burant, Library and Archives, Ottawa
Archives and absences: the graphic records of disorganisation, disorder and dissidence
James Girdwood, University of Glasgow
The ontology of recording and memory
12.45 - 1.30Lunch
Session 2: Collecting and Representing
1.30 - 3.20 Andrew Flinn, University College London
Democratising the archive. Representing diversity: an agenda for a 21st century profession
Sarah Jones, AHDS Performing Arts, HATII, University of Glasgow
Redefining the Performing Arts archive
Gail Chester, Royal Holloway, University of London
When is an archive not an archive? The experience of saving the Feminist Library
Sue Breakell, Tate London and Victoria Worsley, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Context is half the work: activating the Artist Placement Group archive
3.20 - 3.40Coffee
Session 3: Memory and Identity
3.40 - 5.00Heather Home, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario
Aspects of memory
Craig Gauld, University of Glasgow
From things to experience: relativism, identity and the archive
Nick Barratt, Founder, Nation's Memory Bank
Memory, history and social networks
Evening reception
6.30 - 8.30Wine reception, hosted by the National Archives of Scotland
George MacKenzie, Keeper of the Records of Scotland and Professor Chris Whatley, Royal Society of Edinburgh and Vice Principal and Head of the College of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Dundee
Friday 11 April
8.30 - 9.30Registration
Keynote speaker
9.30 - 10.30 Elizabeth Shepherd, University College London
Culture and evidence: conflict or continuum?
10.30 - 10.50 Coffee
Session 4: Social Memory and Evidence
10.50- 12.40Andreas Litschel, Universität Bielefeld, Germany
Perpetuating replacement. Representing archives and the imaginary of social history
Jennifer Meehan, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University
The archival nexus: re-thinking the interplay of ideas about the nature, value and use of records
Ineke Deserno, Monash University, Melbourne
The value of business archives: the importance of the archives of large businesses in shaping cultural identity
Mareike Menne, Universität Stuttgart, Germany
Archives, power and knowledge
12.40 - 1.25Lunch
Keynote speaker
1.25- 2.25Verne Harris, Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, Johannesburg
Against the grain: archive(s), discourse(s) and outside(s)
2.25 - 2.45Coffee
Session 5: Representation, Justice and Power
2.45 - 4.45Giulia Barrera, Italian Archives Directorate, Rome
Of condors and judges: archival musing over a judicial investigation
Tom Connors, University of Maryland, Maryland
The tainted archive: political, moral and philosophical considerations
Tom Adami, United Nations Mission, Sudan
Peacekeeping and archives: The United Nations in Sudan
Alistair Tough, HATII, University of Glasgow
The philosophy of the archive and the social creation of knowledge
4.45 - 5.00 Concluding remarks
Caroline Brown, University of Dundee