Archives and Emotions

WINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF AMERICAN ARCHIVISTS’ WALDO GIFFORD LELAND AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE AND USEFULNESS IN ARCHIVAL HISTORY, THEORY, AND PRACTICE 2025

Archives and Emotions argues, at its most fundamental level, that emotions matter and have always mattered to both the people whose histories are documented by archives and to those working with the documents these contain.

This is the first study to put archivists and historians—scholars and practitioners from different settings, geographical provenance, and stages of career—in conversation with one another to examine the interplay of a broad range of emotions and archives, traditional and digital, from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries across national and disciplinary borders.

Drawing on methodologies from the history of emotions and critical archival studies, this book provides an original analysis of two interconnected themes through a selected number of case studies: the emotional dynamics affecting the construction and management of archives; and the emotions and their effects on the people engaging with them, such as archivists, researchers, and a broad range of communities.

Its main message is that critically investigating the history and mechanics of emotions—including their suppression and exclusion—also being conscious of their effects on people and societies is essential to understanding how archives came to hold deep civic and ethical implications for both present and future. This study thus establishes a solid base for future scholarship and interdisciplinary collaborations and challenges academic and non-academic readers to think, work, and train new generations differently, fully aware that past and present choices have—and might again—hurt, inspire, empower, or silence.

Ilaria Scaglia is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Aston University, UK. She is the author of The Emotions of Internationalism: Feeling International Cooperation in the Alps in the Interwar Period (2020), and of numerous articles and chapters on the history of internationalism, cultural relations, and emotions. She is leading the development of the Aston University Archives. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Valeria Vanesio is Lecturer in the Department of Library Information and Archive Sciences at the University of Malta. She is now International Associate of the Malta Study Center and leads cataloguing and research projects in Malta, Italy and the Vatican Library. Her fields of research include the history of archives and institutions (Order of St John and the Mediterranean area), archival cataloguing standards, digital humanities, archival pedagogies, and colonial legacies in libraries and archives. Her most recent publication is a co-authored article entitled “Pioneers in Maltese Archives and Libraries: People, Contexts and Institutions in 20th-century Malta,” Archives and Records (2024).