Transformative justice: transdisciplinary collaborations for archival autonomy
- Authors: Evans, Joanne , Wilson, Jacqueline , Lewis, Antonina , McGinniss, David , Altham, Siobhan
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Archives and Records Vol. 42, no. 1 (2021), p. 3-24
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- Description: Worldwide inquiries into childhood institutionalization repeatedly document systemic and enduring problems with fractured and fragmented recordkeeping and archiving systems that put the protection of organizations and institutions ahead of the safety and wellbeing of those in their care. As importantly, they demonstrate how much recordkeeping matters in people’s lives and the role that records play in developing and nurturing identity, connection to family, community, and culture, and as instruments of accountability, restitution, and redress. They highlight the transdisciplinarity inherent in recordkeeping endeavours, and for research and praxis in child welfare and protection to transcend disciplinary, professional, and community boundaries to ensure that systems created to protect children from neglect and abuse do not themselves cause harm. In this article we explore the transformative justice approach of the Archives and the Rights of the Child Research Programme, that, through transdisciplinary collaborations investigating rights-based recordkeeping, aims to advance archival autonomy, the ability of individuals and communities to participate in organizational and societal evidence and memory structures with their own voice. This broad re-imagining of recordkeeping is vital if we are to escape endless cycles of ambiguous and disappointing transitional justice outcomes, through recognizing voice and agency in recordkeeping as a human right. © 2020 Archives and Records Association. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Jacqueline Wilson, David McGinniss, Siobhan Altham" is provided in this record**
Rights in records : a charter of lifelong rights in childhood recordkeeping in out-of-home care for Australian and Indigenous Australian children and care leavers
- Authors: Golding, Frank , Lewis, Antonina , McKemmish, Sue , Rolan, Gregory , Thorpe, Kirsten
- Date: 2021
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: International Journal of Human Rights Vol. 25, no. 9 (2021), p. 1625-1657
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- Description: This paper introduces the Charter of Lifelong Rights in Childhood Recordkeeping in Out-of-Home Care, centred on the critical, lifelong and diverse information and recordkeeping needs of Australian and Indigenous Australian children and adults who are experiencing, or have experienced Out-of-Home Care. The Charter is underpinned by the findings of two community-centred research projects, the Australian Research Council-funded Rights in Records by Design, 2017–2020 (applying a Rights by Design approach and co-design methodologies to rights-based recordkeeping systems in Out-of-Home Care), and the Indigenous Archiving and Cultural Safety: Examining the role of decolonisation and self-determination in libraries and archives doctoral project, 2018–2020 (focusing on Indigenous self-determination and cultural safety in the context of archives and libraries). It also draws on foundational research on the recordkeeping rights of Indigenous Australians undertaken in the Australian Research Council-funded Trust and Technology project, 2006–2010. The principles and values underpinning the Charter relate to child wellbeing and safety, self-determination, linked to archival autonomy and agency, and Indigenous Sovereignty and cultural safety. The development of the Charter is core to a National Framework for Recordkeeping for Childhood Out-of-Home Care, a major outcome of the 2017 National Summit on Setting the Record Straight for the Rights of the Child. © 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Weapons of affect : The imperative for transdisciplinary information systems design
- Authors: Rolan, Gregory , Evans, Joanne , Bone, Jane , Lewis, Antonina , Golding, Frank , Wilson, Jacqueline , McKemmish, Sue , Mendes, Philip , Reeves, Keir
- Date: 2018
- Type: Text , Journal article
- Relation: Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology Vol. 55, no. 1 (2018), p. 420-429
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- Description: Much has been written about ethical and human-centred Information Systems (IS) design, most recently regarding the deleterious outcomes and negative affect of some machine learning applications that embed and perpetuate unethical or even inhumane automation. Terms such as ‘harm’, ‘damage’, and surprisingly, ‘weapon’ have entered the language of this discourse. However, these characteristics are not unique to applications of data science but have long manifested in IS that can also can exhibit opacity and establish tight vicious cycles. These, when coupled with a lack of governance feedback, can perpetuate injustice that has community or sector-wide reach. In this paper, we explore how IS design that sets out with the best of intentions or at least, conceived as a ‘neutral’ system for managing transactional information, can emerge as ‘tools that punish’. We argue that there are crucial principles to be taken from Recordkeeping Informatics, concerned as it is with the entanglement of information and people across space and through time on multi-generational timescales. In particular we discuss how transdisciplinary and critical approaches are necessary to cover more of the design space and surface issues, rights, stakeholders, and, most importantly, values that may be otherwise hidden from a here-and-now, transactional viewpoint.