Whose Story is it Anyway? Building an Ethical Culture of Collecting, Cataloguing and Archiving

We are three scholars, working within separate disciplines across three different colleges at UCD. Yet, our research practices share a core commonality: archives. Through an award from ReClaim at UCD, we developed a transdisciplinary workshop for academics, staff and students to share experiences around the practice and theory of data collection and archiving. The workshop was held on September 19 2025 at the University Club, and was attended by participants from every school in UCD.

Our project, entitled ‘Whose Story is it Anyway? Building an Ethical Culture of Collecting, Cataloguing and Archiving,’ uses the workshop as a vehicle to disrupt siloed thinking and invite new methods of critical inquiry at the precise moment when Artificial Intelligence (AI) is itself disrupting established research methodologies. Specifically, this event is envisioned as a collaborative ‘third space’ that on the one hand recognises the diversity inherent to existing research at UCD, while at the same time provides a much-needed opportunity for joined-up-thinking about how archives (broadly defined) are designed, created, shared and disseminated.

Designed as a half-day ‘out of the box’ practicum, the workshop commenced with a panel of short form (lightening) by colleagues from across the university who are using AI and large language models. The second half of the workshop was dedicated to small roundtables led by postgraduates whose work aligned with the broader topic. Our aim is to use catalyse dialogue between STEM fields, the social sciences and humanities, thereby increasing opportunities for sharing techniques and strategies for further work.