Institutional Silence(s): Counter/Archiving as a Creative Methodology

[open to all PhDs, ERCs and Staff accross disciplines]
You are warmly invited to participate in Institutional Silence(s): Exploring Counter/Archiving as a Creative Methodology Panel Discussion & Creative Workshop on Wednesday 13 May | 11:00–14:00 | 1 Priory Road, G02.

Who controls what gets documented - and what gets erased?

This event brings together researchers working on archival politics: from UN peacekeeping records and their (post)colonial endurances, to the production of institutional ignorance, to questions of justice and accountability when the institutions meant to protect us become perpetrators.

We welcome Dr Margot Tudor (University of London ), Dr Owen Thomas (Exeter), and Dr Hannah Richards (Bristol) for a roundtable discussion, followed by a creative workshop that puts these questions into practice. The panel will last one hour (11 am to 12pm) and convened by SPAIS PhD students Marwa Hasona and Julia Spence-Duclos.

Workshop: Speculative Re-imaginings of the Redacted Archive (12:30pm - 1:30pm)

Participants will work with heavily redacted documents drawn from real archives: the National Archive, the Palestinian Museum Digital Archive, Airwars, the CIA, the UN, and the Red Cross. Your task is to read between the gaps. What is missing? What has been silenced? Using speculative thinking and imagination, you'll construct stories around what these documents cannot (or will not ) say.

All materials provided - just turn up!

Light lunch provided as well as tea and coffee throughout.

Sign up via Eventbrite — so we can plan for catering!
Owen David Thomas is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at the University of Exeter and a member of the Secrecy, Power, and Ignorance Research Network (SPIN). His recent research examines public inquiries, archives, and counter‑forensic practices in contexts of conflict and security, such as British state‑led inquiries into military operations (https://warningsfromthearchive.exeter.ac.uk). He is interested in how counter‑archiving can contest forms of censorship, silence, and epistemic power around state violence.

Hannah K. Richards is a Research Associate at the University of Bristol where she works on the ‘’ project. This five-year project looks at sexual misconduct perpetrated by high status/high trust professions in the UK. She holds a PhD in International Relations from Cardiff University. Situated at the intersections of Feminist International Relations, Criminology, and Critical Military Studies, her work explores the relationship between violence, harm, and accountability in the British military.

Dr Margot Tudor (University of London) works on the colonial continuities of international intervention, specialising in UN peacekeeping. Her book Blue Helmet Bureaucrats (Cambridge University Press, 2023) exposes the racialised practices and postcolonial legacies embedded in UN peacekeeping missions — shortlisted for the Royal Historical Society's Gladstone Award 2024. She is currently co-lead on the AHRC project Rethinking Internationalism: Histories and Pluralities.

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Host or Publisher Marwa Hasona and Julia Spence-Duclos