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Unearthing Collections:
Archives, time and ethics

This volume, coedited with Martín Fonck, Tomás J. Usón, and Tina Palaić, will be available open access in late 2025. It stems from an event I co-organized in Berlin as part of the TRACTS COST Action and invites readers to critically reconsider the ethics of collections and archives through the lens of temporality. The book is framed around the concept of ‘unearthing’, the process of revealing hidden truths, excavating layers of history, and uncovering the unknown. It explores how the pursuit of knowledge often comes at the cost of displacement, exploitation, commodification, and the enduring legacies of imperialism and colonialism.

Alongside critique of the extractive practices that shaped many collections and archives, the book proposes a shift towards ‘re-earthing’, a practice that reconfigures how we understand and engage with knowledge about traces. As a critical approach, re-earthing acknowledges the messy, entangled nature of traces of the past, rejecting attempts to purify or control them in collections and archives, so they may evolve into new forms of knowledge. This innovative perspective challenges scholars, archivists, artists, and collection practitioners to rethink their approach to time and trace, urging them to disrupt dominant chronologies and cultivate new ethical approaches for working with collections and archives.

The volume will be available to download here: https://uclpress.co.uk/book/unearthing-collections/

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