Digital Archive of the Middle East Conference

Wednesday, 16 September 2026 to Thursday, 17 September 2026 at 00:00 to 23:59

Beyond Boundaries: Border-Crossings in Archives and Research on the Middle East

Event details

Following on from the success of the 2025 DAME Conference, Archival Journeys: Reframing the Middle East Past and Future, and the lively and creative exchanges it brought about, we are delighted to be holding a second DAME conference this year, Beyond Boundaries: Border Crossings in Archives and Research on the Middle East. 

Building on conversations that developed from last year’s conference, we have again brought together a diverse group of researchers, archivists, librarians, artists, and activists who are involved in archival projects, archival thinking, and the practice of archiving, with the aim of exploring the theme of border-crossings within, across and beyond the Middle East.  Archival collections often traverse borders, rarely bound to a single location and frequently dispersed across institutional, public and personal sites both within the region and in contexts of diaspora and exile. These archives preserve traces of historical actors – from migrants and merchants to students and exiles – who themselves navigated geographical, national, and cultural boundaries. At the same time, archivists and researchers encounter their own forms of border-crossings in the course of archival work, both in practice and across disciplinary and methodological boundaries. 

Contact S.A.Wood2@exeter.ac.uk to register.

Organiser

Institute of Arab and lslamic Studies

Location

Reed Hall