Symposium: Colonial Archives and Meaningful Digital Infrastructure

Date: Friday, 24 January 2025
Time: 10:00 – 15:00 CET
Location: Radboud University, Maria Montessorigebouw, room MM 00.029, Thomas van Aquinostraat 4, 6525 GD Nijmegen

How can digital infrastructures for colonial archives support a better understanding of historical and contemporary issues? This symposium brings together researchers and practitioners to discuss the challenges and opportunities of working with digitized colonial records.

👉 Register now to participate in person or online (Zoom link will be sent by e-mail to all registered participants).

Key topics

• Colonial archives and global significance
  Reflect on the relevance of these archives for understanding shared histories and their broader implications.
• Text recognition and digital access
  Explore what comes after digitization and how to create meaningful tools for using complex historical records.
• Biases in the archive
  Address the inherent biases in colonial records and their impact on research and public access.
• Reaching new audiences
  Consider how digital infrastructures can engage diverse groups, including descendants of colonized communities.

Event overview

Many archives related to the Dutch colonial past have been digitised in recent years. From the archives of the VOC and WIC to early modern family, notarial, and business archives. These archives are closely intertwined with the colonial past itself. They contain information that sheds light on the (everyday) consequences and experiences of colonialism worldwide. These archives also provide access to information about non-European societies that is often not preserved in other ways. Colonial archives are often literally world heritage. More and more archives are therefore being made accessible through digitisation and text recognition. But as rich and diverse as these archives are, they are not neutral.

Challenges and questions

The symposium Colonial archives and meaningful digital infrastructure explores challenges, questions, and examples surrounding digital access and enrichment of shared resources related to the colonial past.

• How can digital infrastructure contribute to making unique information about the people and societies affected by or resisting colonialism findable and researchable?
• How can multiple perspectives and the many voices in these archives be made more visible?
• How can we ethically employ new techniques?
• And who are the true beneficiaries of advanced access and research infrastructure?
• Who should these initiatives serve, and how can global stakeholders beyond Dutch and professional users be reached (such as the descendants of colonized societies and of those societies whose pasts can be reconstructed using these archives)?

New approaches

Last spring, the advice Dealing with shared sources of the colonial past. Advice on repair and restitution in relation to colonial archives by the Dutch Council for Culture called attention to the role that a responsible handling of colonial archives can play in a better understanding of the impact of colonialism worldwide and its legacies to the present day. It also emphasised that colonial archives themselves are often tools that serviced colonial rule, and whose accessibility has often accentuated the flawed and one-sided perspectives that they bear.

New approaches are thus key to ensuring that new digital access and user infrastructures do not amplify colonial distortions or injustices, but instead contribute to dialogues in, and between, former colonizer and colonised societies. This leads to the question: how can digital infrastructures for colonial archives contribute to a better understanding of past and present in a complex world of present-day inequalities and memory cultures?

Program and practical information

09.30 – 10.00 Coffee outside the symposium room MM 00.029

10.00 – 10.15 Welcome
Liedeke Plate, professor and director Radboud Institute for Culture and History, specialized in art, culture and inclusion
Matthias van Rossum, professor Radboud University and researcher IISH Amsterdam, specialized in colonial and labour history

10.15 – 11.00 Panel: Colonial archives, worldwide relevance and the potential of digital unlocking 
Rita Tjien Fooh, national archivist and director National Archives of Suriname, and President Forum of National Archivists
Nadeera Rupesinghe, director general National Archives of Sri Lanka and historian of VOC Sri Lanka
Margo Groenewoud, specialist in colonial archives and digital humanities and historian of the Caribbean
Wisaal Abrahams, visual producer, visual artist and researcher of South African society and history
Nancy Jouwe, cultural historian and researcher, expert in (post)colonial pasts and present, member of the Dutch Council of Culture (Raad voor Cultuur)

Moderator: Wim Manuhutu, heritage specialist and historian VU University, specialized in Moluccan and colonial history

11.00 – 12.00 Text recognition, and then what? Towards meaningful infrastructures for complex archives
Onsland.nl, presented by Thomas van Maaren, community manager WO2Net and Onsland
GLOBALISE, presented by Kay Pepping, Brecht Nijman, Stella Verkijk, team members and researchers GLOBALISE
HUF-project, presented by Hylkje de Jong, professor history of law VU University and projectleader of the Staten van Holland-Utrecht-Friesland project

Chair: Lodewijk Petram, historian Huygens Institute, specialized in financial and public history

12.00 – 13.00 Lunch break

Lunch is not included, but there is the possibility to visit the Grand Café Iris (Maria Montessori building) or the Refter (Erasmus building).

12.30 – 13.00 Coffee outside the symposium room MM 00.029

13.00 – 14.00 Biased structures in the archive as challenge and source
Combatting Bias, Amber Zijlma and Mrinalini Luthra
Exploring Slave Trade in Asia, Britt van Duijvenvoorde, Pascal Konings
GLOBALISE dataset on ethnic, racial and social categories, Dung Pham, Henrike Vellinga
Resilient Diversity court records database, presented by Elisabeth Heijmans and Sophie Rose

Chair: Lodewijk Petram, historian Huygens Institute, specialized in financial and public history

14.00 – 15.00 Slotpanel: Can we reach new audiences? Ways forward for digital infrastructures and colonial archives
Manjusha Kuruppath, team leader at the digital infrastructure project GLOBALISE and historian of the VOC and colonial encounters
Mark Ponte, historian and researcher Stadsarchief Amsterdam, specialized in subaltern and micro-histories
Luc Bulten, historian, lecturer at Radboud University and researcher at Cambridge University, specialized in colonial and non-western history
Stephanie Welvaart, sociologist, independent researcher and specialist in heritage and memory of sensitive and colonial histories

Moderator: Melinda Susanto, historian, outreach manager GLOBALISE and PhD researcher Leiden University

Inaugural Lecture

Organizers

Register now to participate in the symposium in person or online.