Tag: Archives

BAC Bursary for Business History Research

Steph

One of the key purposes of the Business Archives Council is to encourage interest in and study of business history and archives, with a remit covering England and Wales. This bursary – made possible by the generosity of Sir Peter Thompson, former Chairman of the National Freight Corporation, and the Wellcome Foundation – provides financial support for researchers to access business and organisational archives who would not otherwise able to do so.

We will prioritise applications focused on the use of business and organisational archives. Research on business-related collections held in the National Archives or in county record offices will not normally be considered, but we may support projects that involve some work in public archives or that are particularly creative or innovative in their approach to business history. 

We welcome applications from researchers of all kinds who are unable to fund their costs, particularly those who don’t have permanent contracts of employment. Our aim in awarding the bursary is to foster diversity and inclusion in access to business archives.

Our annual bursary fund is approximately £1000 and we may make one or more awards up to this total amount. The size of the pot makes it most suitable for smaller-scale projects, such as scoping or pilot studies, early-stage development of collaborations and exploratory work. We are open, however, to any proposal focused on business archives that meets the eligibility guidelines, regardless of the form and purpose.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the BAC Research Support Bursary, researchers should:

  • Be able to name one or more business or organisational archives based in England and Wales that they intend to use within a 200-word project outline, as well as any outputs they hope to produce
  • Be willing to contribute two short articles for the BAC newsletter or website about their research
  • Commit to acknowledging the BAC and the specific archives used in any outputs arising from their research, such as talks, papers, blogs and articles
  • Confirm that they don’t have access to alternative funding sources to support their project

Benefits

We are keen to give our award-holders opportunities to share their research. We will therefore offer all successful applicants the following, without obligation:

  • Free attendance (when charged) for successful applicants at the BAC annual conference the year after receipt of the bursary
  • An invitation to give a short, informal talk about their research at the BAC awards event the year after receipt of the bursary
  • A fee waiver to attend the annual Association of Business Historians conference in the year of or the year after your award. Support for travel may also be available. Award holders are encouraged to submit a proposal for the conference or to join a panel proposal for award holders.

How to apply

Please complete this simple application on GoogleForms by midday on 29 September 2023. Applications will be reviewed by a panel consisting of Dr Alix Green (BAC Trustee, University of Essex), Prof John Wilson (Newcastle Business School) and Prof Lucy Newton (Henley Business School). The successful applicant/s will be informed by 13 October and a formal announcement will be made at the BAC’s annual awards event towards the end of 2023. If you have any questions, please contact Alix Green: alix.green@essex.ac.uk

Find out more about past winners.

EMAIL ARCHIVING SYMPOSIUM 13-15 June (online)

Steph

The programme for the Email Archiving Symposium is out now:

The keynote is by Nicole Hemmer

Image of keynote speaker Nicole Hemmer.

ABSTRACT:

As historians begin tackling the work of analyzing the 1990s and early 21st century, they are learning that the traditional paper trail — the memos, records, and correspondences that make up so much of the historian’s craft — peters out, and that a world of born-digital sources takes its place. Few historians have been trained to tackle these new archives; even locating emails, videos, and websites remains a monumental task. Nicole Hemmer, a historian of the near-past, will talk about her experiences working with born-digital sources and the challenges the profession must overcome as it reaches the end of the paper-trail era.

BIOGRAPHY:

Nicole Hemmer is director of the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Center for the American Presidency and associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University. She is author of Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics and Partisan: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s. She co-hosts the podcasts Past Present and This Day in Esoteric Political History, and is a columnist at CNN.

To register click here.

CfP Archives of Economic Life

Steph

Archives of Economic Life

A Researching Event for Historians of Capitalism and Corporate Archivists

The Centre for Economic Cultures at the University of Manchester invites submissions for a two-day networking workshop for historians of economic life in the UK, to be held on June 8 and 9, 2023. The workshop will bring together early- and mid-career researchers in the history of capitalism, business, and economic life to discuss research interests and reflect on the history of capitalism in the UK. Scholars will not only engage with each other but will also work with archivists from some of the leading corporate collections in the UK, exploring opportunities for collaboration and research development.

The organizers are keen to identify scholars in the UK pursuing the history of global capitalism and interested in the possibilities that corporate archives might provide in terms of knowledge mobilization and impact agendas. The history of capitalism is understood capaciously – including the history of economic life, business, political economy, consumption, labour, and economic thought – as well as transnationally, and a variety of methodological approaches are welcome. Proceedings will include small-group workshops to discuss shared challenges, presentations of research agendas/works in progress, and panel discussions. The emphasis will be on meeting and discussing rather than formal presentations, but participants should expect to speak about their research agendas and works-in-progress.

Please send an email to the organizer, Dr. Alexia Yates (alexia.yates@manchester.ac.uk) outlining your interest in the workshop, along with a short CV (2 pages) and a 300-word description of a relevant work-in-progress by May 12, 2023. Funding from the AHRC is available to support travel and accommodation expenses.

BHC mid-year virtual event

Featured Steph

We are very proud to be presenting our work with email archives (workshop 2.2) at @the_BHC mid-year event “Methods and Madness” this month. For the up-to-date programme, please see: https://thebhc.org/node/86174 .

Preliminary program for September 30, 2022. Venue: Zoom (Link provided with Registration). All times in Eastern Time (EST). Download PDF of the program here. To see the extended program and post questions to convenors in advance please check out the working document here.

9:00 Welcome
9:15Session 1Reinventing Interpretation
 Workshop 1.1Interpreting Visual Sources Rick Halpern (University of Toronto) and Carol Quirke (State University of New York, Old Westbury) Chair: Beatriz Rodriguez-Satizabal (Universidad del Pacífico)
 Workshop 1.2Interpreting the Senses Ai Hisano (University of Tokyo) and Sven Kube (Florida International University) Chair: Sven Kube (Florida International University)
 Workshop 1.3Material Culture Jen Black (Misericordia University) and Marina Moskowitz (University of Wisconsin) Chair: Paula de la Cruz-Fernández (BHC)
 Workshop 1.4 Topic Modeling Marta Villamor (University of Maryland) and Fabian Prieto-Nañez (Virginia Tech) Chair: Ghassan Moazzin (University of Hong Kong)
 Workshop 1.5Databases, Network Analysis and QCA Erica Salvaj (Universidad del Desarrollo), Alberto Rinaldi (Unimore) and Susie Pak (St. John’s University) Chair: Valeria Giacomin (Bocconi University)
 Workshop 1.6Built and Natural Environment Jeremy Zallen (Lafayette College) and Bartow Elmore (Ohio State University) Chair: Christoph Viebig (Copenhagen Business School)
10:15BreakAttendees are welcomed to stay connected during the 15 minutes break
10:30Session 2Reinventing Sources
 Workshop 2.1Account Books Rachel Van (Cal Poly, Pomona), Caitlin Rosenthal (University of California, Berkeley), William Deringer (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Chair: Ellen Nye (Harvard University)
 Workshop 2.2Email archives Stephanie Decker (Birmingham Business School), David Kirsch (University of Maryland), and Adam Nix (University of Birmingham) Chair: Christoph Viebig (Copenhagen Business School)
 Workshop 2.3Online Archives Philip Scranton (Rutgers University), Edward Balleisen (Duke University), Andrea Lluch (CONICET) and Geoffrey Jones (Harvard Business School) Chair: Ghassan Moazzin (University of Hong Kong)
 Workshop 2.4Advertisements  Susmita Das (University of Illinois) and Cynthia Meyers (College of Mount Saint Vincent) Chair: Paula de la Cruz-Fernández
 Workshop 2.5Forms and Reports  Sean Vanatta (University of Glasgow) and Gabriela Recio Chair: Beatriz Rodriguez-Satizabal (Universidad del Pacífico)
 Workshop 2.6Legal sources Ashton Merck (North Carolina State University), Anna Hrom (William & Connolly LLP), Nate Holdren (Drake University), and Justene Hill Edwards (University of Virginia) Chair: Ashton Merck (North Carolina State University)
11:30BreakAttendees are welcomed to stay connected during the 15 minutes break
11:45Session 3Reinventing Form
 Workshop 3.1Visualizing the past David Staley (Ohio State University) Chair: Ellen Nye (Harvard University)
 Workshop 3.2History-as-Dialogue: Podcasting Bernardo Batiz-Lazo (Northumbria University) and Gregory Hargreaves (Hagley Museum & Library) Chair: Beatriz Rodriguez-Satizabal (Universidad del Pacífico)
 Workshop 3.3 Business History and Business/Policy in Practice  John Wilson (Newcastle University Business School) and Anna Tilba (Durham University) Chair: TBA
 Workshop 3.4 Microhistory  Andrew Popp (Copenhagen Business School) and Susan Lewis (State University of New York at New Paltz) Chair: Sven Kube (Florida International University)
 Workshop 3.5Curation Marina Moskowitz (University of Wisconsin) Chair: Paula de la Cruz-Fernández
 Workshop 3.6Tiktok History  Zhaojin Zeng (Duke Kunshan University) Chair: Valeria Giacomin (Bocconi University)
12:45BreakAttendees are welcomed to stay connected during the 15 minutes break
13:00 Wrap Up: Where Might We Go From Here?

Business Archives Council Bursary

Steph

The Business Archives Council’s bursary for business history research provides financial support for researchers to access business and organisational archives who would not otherwise be able to do so. The closing date for this year has been extended, but applications must be in by 30 September. Information about the bursary, eligibility and how to apply can be found on the BAC website – 

https://businessarchivescouncil.org.uk/activitiesobjectives/bursary/

AOM 2022 PDW: Digital archives search

Featured Steph

Are you interested in learning about how to use email in your research? If so, please come to a special Professional Development Workshop (PDW) at the 2022 Academy of Management (AOM) Annual Meeting to learn how other scholars are using email and to participate in a study about knowledge discovery in large-scale, organizational email corpora.

Emails are materially different from the correspondence of the pre-digital age, but their significance as traces of the past is substantial, especially for organizations, where email is not only used as a form of correspondence but also as an informal mode of record keeping. We believe that the preservation of a meaningful, relatively complete email archive is one plausible pathway to supporting scholarly research on organizations.

The forthcoming PDW — “Introducing the ‘Digitally Curious’ to Email Archives for Organizational Research and History (session 183)” — is sponsored by the Management History (MH) division of AOM and will introduce the “digitally curious” scholar to email archives for organizational research. It will be moderated by Prof David Kirsch (University of Maryland, US), Dr Adam Nix (University of Birmingham, UK), Shubhangkar Girish Jain (University of Maryland, US) in person, and online by Prof Stephanie Decker (University of Birmingham, UK, and University of Gothenburg, Sweden) and Dr Santhilata Kuppili Venkata (independent scholars).

The PDW will take place on Friday, August 5, from 2:00-4:00pm PDT in a hybrid format with both in-person and virtual participation supported. To allow participants to access the email tools and collections, pre-registration is requested. If you would like to register or to learn more about the workshop and the project, please email Shubhangkar Girish Jain (shubhangkar.girishjain@marylandsmith.umd.edu).

Attendees at the PDW are invited to contribute to research on the use of email and will be encouraged to complete a post-workshop survey that will constitute an input to our ongoing research in this area. Completion of the survey is not required to attend and participate in the workshop.

New funding for Email Archives Research Project

Steph

EMCODIST – The Next Phase

Following the publication of our Dotcom-Archive website [link to Monday’s post] we’re delighted to announce that we’ve been awarded follow-on funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation [https://mellon.org] via the Email Archives: Building Capacity and Community (EA:BCC) programme at the University of Illinois [https://emailarchivesgrant.library.illinois.edu].

 “Discovery environments for using email archives: Evaluating user needs with prototype version of EMailCOntextualisationDIScovery Tool” (or just “EMailCOntextualisationDIScovery”) is a new project that will build on Contextualizing Email Archives and the ECOMDIST discovery prototype we developed.

The award (approximately $57,000) will fund tool development, testing and user experience analysis in 2022 and 2023.

Why email?

Emails are materially different from correspondence of the pre-digital age, but their significance as traces of the past is substantial, especially for organizations, where email is not only used as a form of correspondence but also as an informal mode of record keeping. We believe that the preservation of a meaningful, relatively complete email archive is one plausible pathway to supporting scholarly research on organizations. 

Our work focuses on how researchers will engage with such resources, having previously developed an AI-based discovery tool (ECOMDIST), which we used to explore a dotcom-era email archive [https://dotcomarchive.bristol.ac.uk/]. Our new project will bring this technology to researchers in management and organization history, one of the key scholarly use cases for large-scale email corpora, and see how it can best be developed to support a context-sensitive discovery process.

Going to AoM?

One of our first activities on the project will be a Professional Development Workshop (PDW) at this year’s Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management in Seattle [https://aom.org/events/annual-meeting]. Sponsored by the Management History (MH) division, Introducing the “digitally curious” to email archives for organizational history will:

  1. introduce “digitally curious” management scholars to the use of email collections as contexts for research;
  2. orient scholars to new tools for interacting with sample email collections, including EMCODIST; and 
  3. provide a forum for scholars to share and learn from each other about emerging best practices in the use of email as a context for research. 

The PDW will take place on Friday, August 5, from 2:00-4:00p PDT in a hybrid format with in-person and virtual participation supported. To allow participants to access the email tools and collections, pre-registration is required. If you would like to register or to learn more about the workshop and the project, please email Shubhangkar Girish Jain (shubhangkar.girishjain@marylandsmith.umd.edu).​

Archival surveying conference in memory of Michael Moss

Steph

Re-appraisal of surveying: a vital archival tool for contemporary collecting

27-28 April 2022. 

Online conference in memory of Professor Michael S Moss.

The event, which is being jointly organised by the Business Archives Council, Business Archives Council of Scotland and The National Archives, with the support of the British Records Association, will consist of short papers and sessions spread over two half-days, on 27 and 28 April 2022.

Surveying remains a universally useful tool for all archivists and we are seeking speakers on archival surveying of all kinds, not just in relation to business archives, both from the UK and globally. We hope that this conference will provide a space to share best practice, and expect the event to be followed by practical half-day face-to-face workshops on surveying techniques across the UK.

This conference will consider the UK’s extraordinary track record of successful archival surveying and look at the many ways in which surveys can not only contribute to the collecting function of an archive but also ensure that the heritage of an organisation, region or nation is appropriately reflected in its archival collections.

For more information and further updates visit: busarchscot.org.uk/events/surveying-conference/

Unlocking our Digital Past – 2nd workshop

Steph

For those with an interest in digital history and digital archives, reflections and presentations from the second workshop of the “Unlocking our Digital Past” are available here: https://unlockingourdigitalpast.com/blog-2/

Also AEOLIAN (AI for Cultural Organisations), an international network, runs events – to find out more you can join their mailing list to receive the latest news: https://www.aeolian-network.net/join-aeolian-2/

Gerald Aylmer Seminar: New Ways to Work (17 September)

Steph

The Gerald Aylmer Seminar is an annual one-day symposium organised by The National Archives, The Royal Historical Society and The Institute of Historical Research in memory of Gerald Aylmer (1926-2000), who was president of The Royal Historical Society and Chairman of the Institute of Historical Research. Its purpose is to bring together archivists and historians to discuss topics of mutual interest. 

This year’s event, ‘New Ways to Work – future directions for archival and historical practice’, will take place 17 September and consider how we are working now, having been forced to make difficult decisions, to adapt and innovate in what we do and how we engage with each other, but also how do we best move forward in a relationship that may not return to ‘normal’. A provisional programme is available – https://symphony-live-new2.s3.amazonaws.com/bB47zjaqdry5Gbppd7K9wsfXdULbKh5UtCphS5Ge4GBDdOVgZeLhLX6ItDnWcixB/Aylmer%20Provisional_Programme_2021.pdf. 

It is free to attend and will be held online, but booking if required. To register, please click here – https://www.history.ac.uk/events/gerald-aylmer-seminar-2021