Study title

The research project sought to understand the histories and development of the three chosen archives in South America, focussing in particular on the challenges they had faced and how they had overcome them. Its purpose was not only to record these histories but also to provide recommendations for those setting up archives elsewhere both within and outside Latin America. To this end, the team contacted the archives and requested interviews with members of the archives. We were able to secure interviews with workers currently working at the archives as well as those who had previously worked there (this was especially important in the case of the Colombian Centro Nacional de Memoria Historica, where there had been several recent changes in personnel). We also interviewed persons who were not workers in the archives but that worked in other archives, museums or communities in these countries with an interest in how human rights violations were being registered. Through these interviews one is able to understand the histories of the different histories of these archives, the ways in which they approach their work and the challenges that each has and continues to face.This data arises from the British Academy-funded research project ‘Documentality & Display: Archiving and Curating Past Violence in South America’. The project drew upon the notion of 'documentality' in the philosophy of Maurizio Ferraris, by which the social order is understood to be founded upon the ways in which human lives are inscribed, both materially and imaginatively, to study key centres of post-conflict documentation in South America. The project asked: How should those effected by state violence and armed conflict record and collect their experiences to lend them effectively to future justice processes and future use? How are questions of inclusiveness, categorisation and material delimitations dealt with by established and emerging archives and documentation centres? As societies develop,...