Flora Chatt, Archivist at the Humanitarian Archive, attended the ‘Dangerous Writings’ symposium organised by the University of Manchester’s School of Social Sciences. The event explored the complex dangers associated with writing, curating, and reading, as well as the responsibilities these activities entail.
Archivists and scholars from various disciplines gathered to examine how dangerous writings emerge, influence those who encounter them, and how to engage with such texts ethically.
Flora’s presentation covered the assessment of risk and danger in the Humanitarian Archive at the University of Manchester, in particular, how this affects archives relating to active conflict zones, where the passage of time does not guarantee a straightforward diminishment of risk.
This issue is affected by legal restrictions affecting access to sensitive data concerning living people, but also by an ethical judgement of how these archives, and access to them, affect the people described in them.