CONFERENCE / “Overcoming the archival secrecy ? the OFF-SITE research project experience”

Natalia Pashkeeva, Post-doctoral Research Fellow at the ERC Off-Site took part in the Human Rights Panel at the International Conference on Contemporary Iranian Studies (ICCI) organized by Iran Academia on 26 August 2022 at The Hague (Netherlands) on the topic: “Overcoming the archival secrecy ? the OFF-SITE research project experience”.

ABSTRACT

The control of the collective memory of the violence that engulfed the country during a revolution, involving a radical change in political and ideological structures, is of strategic importance for the regime. Access to the Iranian archives remains under severe restrictions, and significant efforts are made by the IRI government to control information on the Web. Though, significant historical data are made available online by various actors: Iranian government bodies and organizations backed by the government, NGOs, research institutions, and Iranian diasporas. These Web historical data in its raw state form an unreliable environment. Being removed from the original archival fonds, it touches the feelings constructing the history through the emotional and imaginative appeal of associated objects. The question is how to work with these raw historical data. The CNRS-ERC project OFF-SITE aims at providing an archival ethnography of post-revolution Iran, addressing, among others, issues like integrity, authenticity and traceability of sources in digital environment. Substantial parts of this research will be available through a database built following the conceptual model of the new archival ontology RiC-O and managed by Heurist.

Natalia Pashkeeva speaks from 18:15.