Through the use of feminist historiography this article examines some of the myriad ways in which feminist praxis has pushed against, challenged, enriched, dismantled, assimilated or otherwise affected archival theory and practice. We contend that archival theory and practice have yet to fully engage with a feminist praxis that is aimed at more than attaining better representation of women in archives. We begin this piece by tracing the ways in which archives became embedded in feminist social movements and can be understood as critical tools and modes of self-representation and self-historicization. In the second section, we consider the explicit presence of feminist theory in archival studies literature and contemporary practice and the key focal points and arguments that have challenged traditional understandings of archival work around gender. We then address, in the third section, the expansive figure of the archives in humanities and social science literature. This piece contributes significantly to thinking on the ways in which these conversations in the archival turn can, at their best, expose blind spots within the archival literature and provide us with theoretical tools to tackle what we take for granted. Finally, we offer ways in which we see critical and intersectional feminist theory can contribute to existing archival discourse and practice, critiquing concepts that have remained unquestioned such as community and organization. This piece exposes the transformational potential of feminism for archives and of archives for dismantling the heteronormative, capitalist and racist patriarchy.

This paper argues that personal actualisation of human and personal rights articulated in key conventions, declarations and other internationally recognized instruments is significantly impeded without similar recognition of individual rights 'in and to records'. It reports on a study in which archival literary warrant analysis was applied top-down on 19 such instruments, and on professional international guidelines for records relevant to human rights. Warrant was also derived bottom-up from media and personal accounts of documentation and recordkeeping challenges faced by refugees. The results of the analyses were used to identify potential rights in and to records necessary to enable and actualise refugees' human rights. These potential rights were then clustered within a framework together with the warrants from which they were derived. While this study makes the case for how a platform of rights in records could support refugees in enabling and actualizing their human rights, further research is necessary to test whether it is sufficiently inclusive to encompass any context in which documentation and recordkeeping play key roles in enabling and actualising human rights, and whether rights in and to records should themselves be recognized as fundamental human rights.

Recent debates have revealed the urgent need for work addressing social and ethical implications of the algorithmic and data‐driven systems that govern our lives. Focusing largely on machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI), conversations among scholars, journalists, and advocates have started to address questions of fairness, bias, transparency, access, participation, and discrimination often under the monikers “AI and Ethics” (AI+Ethics) or “fairness, accountability, and transparency in algorithms” (FAT*). Underlying these discourses are concerns about how to mitigate discrimination and bias in data, as well as open questions over whether algorithmic systems can be fair and if their use will help promote equitable futures (or instead further perpetuate existing inequalities). Despite the seeming “newness” of these issues, many of the underlying concerns have a longstanding tradition and intellectual lineage in the library and information science (LIS) field. In this panel, we will discuss and elaborate on these connections, drawing on our research and experiences in a number of contexts and outlining opportunities these relationships present for future research and engagement.

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This paper considers the history and politics of 'police data.' Police data, I contend, is a category of endangered data reliant on voluntary and inconsistent reporting by law enforcement agencies; it is also inconsistently described and routinely housed in systems that were not designed with long-term strategies for data preservation, curation or management in mind. Moreover, whereas US law enforcement agencies have, for over a century, produced and published a great deal of data about crime, data about the ways in which police officers spend their time and make decisions about resources-as well as information about patterns of individual officer behavior, use of force, and in-custody deaths-is difficult to find. This presents a paradoxical situation wherein vast stores of extant data are completely inaccessible to the public. This paradoxical state is not new, but the continuation of a long history co-constituted by technologies, epistemologies and context.