Keynote Speakers
Kim Lawson (she/her)
Research and Community Liaison Librarian, Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre (IRSHDC) at UBC
Kim is a member of the Heiltsuk Nation, (Bella Bella, BC) and is interested in community and interpersonal relationships as a central element of Indigenous knowledge systems. Her Master’s thesis, “Precious Fragments: First Nations Materials in Archives, Libraries and Museums,” was written to acknowledge Indigenous cultural and knowledge professionals. She led the development of the “Our Homes are Bleeding” digital collection in order to pilot a digitization and media preservation program while she was Archivist/Librarian at the Union of BC Indian Chiefs; she expanded the Xwi7xwa Library media collection after it became a UBC Library branch. She is interested in safety and pedagogy in intergenerational and digital spaces.
Melissa Adams (she/her)
Speaking on Behalf of Kim Lawson
Librarian and Archivist, Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
Melissa Adams is the Librarian and Archivist at the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs
(UBCIC). She is a member of the Nisga’a Nation from the House of Wisin Xbil’tkw of the
Gisk’aast (Killerwhale) tribe. Her education background includes History, First Nations Studies
and Archival Studies, and she completed the Aboriginal Training Program in Museum Practices
at the Canadian Museum of History. She has previously worked at government, religious,
educational and private libraries and archives.
Panel Speakers
Simen Fjeld-Olsen (he/him)
Operations Manager, Piql and the Arctic World Archive
He has been with Piql for six years working on the preserving the world’s memory in the Arctic World Archive.
Hannes Dempewolf (he/him)
Chief strategic adviser, Senior Scientist at the Global Crop Diversity Trust (Crop Trust)
Hannes Dempewolf is speaking on behalf of CropTrust and the Svalbard Global Seed Vault project. He is the Crop Trust’s Chief Strategic Adviser and in this role works at the interface of partnerships, resource mobilization, project development, science and policy. He is also the Crop Trust’s focal point for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Before assuming his current role, he has spent more than a decade working for the Crop Trust in a number of positions, such as Director of External Affairs as and the Crop Trust’s leader of the project “Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Collecting, Protecting and Preparing Crop Wild Relatives.” Hannes studied Plant Science at the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh in Scotland and completed his PhD training in Botany at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. His scientific interest focuses on the evolution, maintenance and conservation of agrobiodiversity and the importance of such diversity for farming communities.
Amanda Oliver (she/her)
Head of Archives and Special Collections at Wilfrid Laurier University
Amanda Oliver is the Head of Archives and Special Collections at Wilfrid Laurier University, located on the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishnaabe, and Haudenosaunee peoples. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science, with a concentration in archives, from McGill University, and a Master of Arts in Preventive Conservation from Northumbria University. Her research interests include the impacts of climate change on Canadian archives and sustainable professional practice.
Rose Miyonga (she/her)
PhD Candidate at the University of Warwick
Bio: Rose Miyonga is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick, where her research focuses on the making of histories and memories of the Mau Mau War in post-independence Kenya. Her current research is concerned with questions of archival silence, and sources that speak into the gap between government records and lived experience using participatory research methodologies, non-traditional archives, and oral histories.
Rami Zurayk (he/him)
Professor, American University of Beirut
Rami Zurayk is a professor at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences and the Interim Director of the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) of the Committee of World Food Security (CFS), and a commissioner on the EAT-Lancet commission on sustainable diets from sustainable food systems. He is a founding member of the Arab Food Sovereignty Network. He has worked and written extensively on the Arab World, focusing on the political ecology of Arab food security and its linkages with the agrarian question. His work includes Control Food, Control People: The Struggle for Food Security in Gaza (with Ann Gough), Food, Farming and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring and 2006: A War Diary For more information visit: https://www.aub.edu.lb/pages/profile.aspx?memberId=rzurayk
Susan Webster (she/her)
Archaeology Archivist – UBC |Lab of Archaeology (LOA) | Department of Anthropology
Susan is the archivist at UBC’s Lab of Archaeology Archives, which is an archaeological repository located on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) people. She has a BA in Anthropology/Archaeology and is a graduate from UBC’s School of Information. Susan has mixed ancestry with her father being from the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation – Treaty 6 Territory, and believes that it is imperative to acknowledge Indigenous knowledge systems and create systems that better reflect Indigenous epistemologies and local community needs through a collaborative community-centered approach. Susan is also interested in the practical implementation of oral history projects in memory institutions with an emphasis on oral history as testimony and addressing barriers to access within knowledge-based platforms and information sharing.
Agata Nguyen Chuong (she/her)
Architectural designer and researcher, Forensic Architecture (based at Goldsmiths, University of London)
Agata Nguyen Chuong is a Polish/Vietnamese researcher with Forensic Architecture, based in London, UK. Agata’s research focuses on environmental violence, land dispossession and extraction. A Royal College of Art graduate, she currently coordinates the long-term project on the Nama and Ovaherero genocide in today’s Namibia.
Sara J. Grossman (she/her)
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Bryn Mawr College
Sara J. Grossman is Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies on the Johanna Alderfer Harris and William H. Harris, M.D Professorship in Environmental Studies at Bryn Mawr College. She has published a book of poems, Let the House of Body Fall, and her first academic monograph, Immeasurable Weather, was published by Duke University Press in August 2023. She works at the intersection of U.S. environmental history and creative praxis, utilizing historical knowledge to mobilize for just environmental futures.’
Omar Ferwati (he/him)
Research Coordinator, Forensic Architecture
Omar is the Research Coordinator at Forensic Architecture, developing and applying spatial methods for human rights investigations. His investigations have ranged from airstrikes and colonial violence in Palestine to environmental racism in Namibia . He trained as an architect in Canada and has worked at several architecture practices internationally. Omar previously taught at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture.
Student Speakers
Amy Wickner (she/they)
Electronic Records Archivist & PhD Candidate, University of Maryland, College Park
I’m a digital archivist and student living, working, and studying on traditional Piscataway land. My dissertation (which you’ll hear about today) is about the impacts of climate and environment on archival work, and the many ways archival workers have responded.
Dana Murray (she/her)
Graduate Student at the University of Toronto
Dana Murray is a cultural heritage professional currently working towards her PhD in Information at the University of Toronto. Her research is focused on the psychological impact of disasters on gallery, library, archive, and museum (GLAM) professionals, with a particular interest in the shared sense of professional duty in the GLAM sector.
Eddie Buergler (they/them)
Graduate Student at the University of Alabama
Eddie Buergler is a first-year graduate student at the University of Alabama. Their professional interests include sustainability in archives, fostering equitable, reliable, and beneficial relationships with constituencies, and developing evaluative methods for archival practices.
Harry Hoy (he/him)
Library Intern, EPA-RTP Library. Master of Science in Information Science, 2022-2024. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Harry Hoy is a second year Master of Science in Information Science student at UNC Chapel Hill. Before starting the program he received a BA in linguistics from Boston College and managed the Conshohocken Free Library in Conshohocken, PA. Harry’s research interests are at the intersection of critical library and archival practice, environmental justice, and decolonization.