Conference

Dr Hannah Ishmael

Dr. Hannah Ishmael is Lecturer in Digital Culture and Race here in the Department of Digital Humanities. Hannah was the Collections and Research Manager at Black Cultural Archives where she worked with Google to provide an array of content for their Arts and Culture platform amongst other projects.

Hannah’s research interests revolve around engagement with ‘Critical Archival Studies’ and is particularly interested in the role of care and ethics within digital projects, alongside a broad interest in ‘ephemera’ and Black British history.

‘Living Archives’: On Ephemera as Method

Hannah willl discuss some theoretical approaches to thinking about ephemerality broadly, using the work of Stuart Hall and other key theorists and then focussing on two key case studies that outline how engaging with ephemerality has underpinned the collecting practices of minorities archives such as the rukus! Archive which is a key Black LGBTQ+ collection and Black Cultural Archives. 

Kate Dossett

Kate Dossett is an award-winning historian of the twentieth century United States with broad interests in cultural and political history and specializations in histories of the African Diaspora and cultural archives. Kate works with theatre practitioners, curators and educators on Staging the Archive to bring archival plays by Black theatre makers to stages and classrooms. She has collaborated with the National Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, the British Library and The National Archives to find new ways to encounter archives and to address the silencing and censorship of Black artistic work. She is currently Professor of American History at the University of Leeds. 

Challenging Collections through Collective Encounter: Black Theatre Makers in the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays Collection

Staging the Archive explores the challenges of finding and encountering the work of Black theatre makers held in the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays Collection, the British Library’s largest single manuscript collection. Working with theatre makers, curators and educators,  Kate and the Staging the Archive team have developed methods of collective encounter and emotional preparedness, supporting archive users to talk back to and create new audiences for censorship archives.

Sam Wilkinson

Sam Wilkinson is  Director of Public Art at UCL and Cultural and Community Engagement for UCL East.

Words Matter – Dialogues on Eugenics, Power and Healing

Sam will present an overview of an exhibition that sought to confront the enduring legacy of eugenics within institutional collections and narratives. Bringing together twelve multidisciplinary artists, the project re-examined constructed ideas of “normality” and “superiority” through lived experience, performance, and storytelling. It demonstrated how museums and archives can move beyond exclusionary frameworks, using creative practice to challenge inherited biases, amplify marginalised voices, and imagine more inclusive, reparative futures.

The exhibition emerged from a six-month knowledge exchange programme developed in collaboration with UCL’s collections teams and partner arts organisations. This process placed underrepresented voices at its centre, exploring how arts-based approaches can open up complex and difficult histories to wider audiences. The resulting exhibition presented newly commissioned works that invite reflection on repair, inclusion, and the possibilities for a more equitable future.