It is exciting times for Archives & Manuscripts as we determine the future of the publication. Working behind the scenes to bring you fascinating articles and insightful reviews is the Editorial Board. Each with their own unique archival story to tell, A&M Assistant Editor, Hannah Hibbert, decided to start chatting with the members and asking them to share their writing and archival journeys.
Checking in with James Lowry (left with colleagues in Khartoum, Sudan, 2015) – James Lowry is a lecturer at the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies. He began his career in the state government of South Australia. After moving to the UK in 2007, James led records and archives management projects in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Tunisia as the Deputy Director of the International Records Management Trust. He was the principal investigator for the Trust’s Aligning Records Management with ICT, e-Government and Freedom of Information in East Africa research project, which examined public sector records management capacity across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi in relation to government priorities for computerisation and access to information. James is Chair of the Association of Commonwealth Archivists and Records Managers (ACARM), Secretary to the International Council on Archives’ (ICA) Africa Programme, and an ex-officio member of the ICA’s Programme Commission. In his most recent writing endeavour, James’ edited collection of essays on issues of displaced and migrated archives was published as Displaced Archives in February 2017 by Routledge (https://www.routledge.com/Displaced-Archives/Lowry/p/book/9781472470690). At the ICA Congress in Seoul in September 2016, James chaired a panel discussion with two of the book’s contributors, Anne Gilliland, of UCLA in the United States, and Eric Ketelaar, Emeritus Professor at the University of Amsterdam, following which the ICA announced the establishment of the Expert Group on Shared Archival Heritage to address the ongoing challenge of the displacement of archival materials.
How did you get into writing about archival matters?
I was encouraged to participate in professional activities by members of the South Australian branch of the ASA when I was a Master’s student. I contributed to the branch newsletter and was fortunate to receive a Sharman Award bursary in 2006, allowing me to attend my first ASA conference. I didn’t start publishing in journals until I was working at the International Records Management Trust. We’d finished a research project and wanted to disseminate the findings more widely so I revised my research reports into a number of articles, one of which appeared in Archives and Manuscripts.
What are your areas of interest, archivally speaking?
Government record-keeping. That might sound dry but it includes archival history, political and philosophical questions and information policy. I’m interested in administrative traditions, particularly relating to imperialism. For instance, the registry practices I first encountered in Australia I’ve also seen in operation in countries in Africa and the Caribbean. Similar bureaucratic structures and mechanisms were replicated across the British Empire, and these systems are interesting from a technical perspective, but also as a way of thinking about the relationship between records and power. I think this is where my work on displaced archives fits – the examples of displacement that interest me most are post-colonial cases because they represent an ongoing power imbalance.
There is also a whole field of possible research at the intersection of political philosophy, political science and record-keeping that I think is underexplored. For example, the works of philosophers like Giorgio Agamben, Michel Serres and Jacques Rancière highlight important questions about citizenship and rights; I think these are inherently records issues too. I’m about to start a research project with Anne Gilliland called Records and ICT at the Boundaries of the State: Refugee Needs, Rights and Uses that will explore some of these issues.
In terms of policy work, I’ve been increasingly interested in openness and access in the last few years, particularly in the need to ensure records issues are incorporated into the UK’s Open Government Partnership action plan. I’ve also been able to contribute to the UK’s Home Office working group on access to police records following the investigation into the Hillsborough disaster.
Do you have any advice for any potential writers out there?
Writing about the specific processes and stories that you are part of is a good place to start. Studying the types of records you work with on a daily basis allows you to consider theoretical and practical questions in detail. I think it’s useful to consider the different types and instantiations of records, the socio-political functions they perform, and the ways records can bind people to institutions and systems. People who work with records on a daily basis are well-placed to write about these things. Considering different record types can serve as a jumping off point for discussions about data, technology, individual and community stories, etc. Jane Zhang’s recent article in Archives and Manuscripts on Lakota winter counts is a great example of an examination of a record type in relation to its purpose and implications for individuals and societies.
In terms of theories and methodologies, I think that records professionals could be more engaged with what is going on in other fields, so I think that reading widely beyond our own discipline is really important. The new book Research in the Archival Multiverse showcases some of the diversity in the work that’s going on, and there’s room for much more diversity.
Do you have a favourite archival moment?
Yes, it came when I was able to help reunite a man in the UK with his half-sister. She’d been put ‘in care’ in the UK and later sent to Australia. Family rumours placed her in South Africa, but I found her name in a register of nurses that showed she’d trained in nursing in Australia. Locating this archival evidence helped the family find her through Facebook. It was only ten minutes’ work, but it made a big difference to that family. I think that most archivists and records managers have stories like that. We’re lucky to do such socially important work.
Comments