The Association of Canadian Archivists Student Chapter at the University of British Columbia (ACA@UBC) is delighted to present its annual international Seminar and Symposium, Transforming Archival Education, which will be held from April 28th to 29th, 2022.

As an online event, attendees and presenters will be coming from many different places around the world. However, we wish to expressly acknowledge that the UBC iSchool is located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people.

How does someone learn to be a good archivist, and what does being a “good archivist” mean? Terry Cook (2000) advocates bridging the perceived divide between theory and practice by challenging “the imperative of absolutes” in archival education, while Bergis Jules (2016) calls on archivists to center people over professional “neutrality” in order to combat the harms of a historical record “filled with silences, absences, and distortions, mostly affecting the legacies of the less privileged.” Anne Gilliland et al. (2008) suggest that integrating Indigenous knowledge and practices into archival pedagogy is necessary to prevent archival education from potentially acting as a neocolonial force. Given these assessments of archival education and the profession, we ask: can archival education support the transformation of the archival profession and break down barriers to justice? How can it do so?

In the 13th annual ACA@UBC Seminar and Symposium, we will push the boundaries of our understanding of archival education through redefining archives, dismantling academic gatekeeping, and challenging Euro-centric models of archival education and practice. During two days of virtual participatory discussions and panels with leaders in the field, attendees will challenge and broaden their understanding of who archival education can serve and how.