The Archive of the Future

Join us for a conversation with research librarians, archivists, and scholars reflecting on university-community research partnerships, imaginative ways of activating and mobilizing the archives, best practices of preserving large oral history collections, and what it means to archives by and for community. This conversation will speak to these challenges and the tensions that arise when community-grounded archival practice interacts with traditional archival institutions. Through conversation the panelists hope to offer best practices, insights, and share their experiences working to build an inclusionary archive for the future.

How can you participate? Join us in person by or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions or if we can make this event more accessible for you: Contact us at info.4@concordia.ca

Sonia Dhaliwal

Sonia Dhaliwal is the Research Data Librarian at Brock University. She holds an MA in History from Concordia and a MISt from McGill University. Sonia's work focuses on helping researchers manage, preserve, and share research outputs in ways that support long-term access and reuse. Before moving into librarianship, Sonia worked in community archives, collaborating with communities to document, preserve, and make accessible stories, histories, and records that are often underrepresented in traditional archival institutions. This experience continues to inform her approach to research data stewardship, particularly around questions of inclusion, community engagement, ethical knowledge sharing, and the preservation of diverse voices for future generations.

Sarah Lake

Sarah Lake (she/her) is the Digital Preservation Librarian at Concordia University Library in Montreal, Quebec. She holds a MISt from McGill University and her research interests include web archiving, community-driven digital preservation, and the intersection between archives, technology and memory. She is currently serving an appointment as Visiting Program Officer for Digital Preservation at the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), and she chairs the CARL Digital Preservation Working Group.

Alexandra Mills

Alexandra Mills (she/her) is the Head, Special Collections and Archives, at Concordia University Library in Montreal, Quebec. She holds an MLIS from the School of Information Studies at McGill University with a specialization in archival studies, and an MA in art history from Concordia University. Her research is in the areas of archival acquisition, building community centered collections, and approaches to teaching with archival materials.

Kristen Young

Kristen Young is a settler from Xaymaca (Jamaica). She has lived and worked in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal for almost a decade. As a third-culture kid with a deep interest in applying the principle of sankofa to the every day, Kristen uses her training as an archivist and her interest in collaboration, mental health, community care, and community education in the many hats she wears both professionally and personally. She currently works at Concordia University as the Coordinator, Black Community Engagement.

Anna Vigeland

Anna Vigeland is a doctoral student in Concordia’s INDI program, where her FRQSC-supported research is driven by overlapping interests in oral history, circus histories, memory, performance-making, and translation. She began her PhD after close to 20 years in the circus field, graduating from Montréal’s National Circus School in 2007 and working by turns as performer, choreographer, dramaturgy collaborator, cultural worker, and translator for circuses. Drawn to experimentation and crossovers between genres, she’s also co-developed and presented devised, interdisciplinary performance collaborations in Bulgaria, Serbia, Norway, Germany, France, Italy, Greece, the US, and Québec. Her research and projects have been supported by TCG Global Connections, the International Theatre Institute-Germany, l’Observatoire des médiations culturelles, a Bread Loaf Katharine Bakeless Nason scholarship, a Carolyn and Brian Neysmith Graduate Scholarship, le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts, among others.