James Lowry

Research & Professional Interests

James Lowry is a Professor at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the Ellen Libretto and Adam Conrad Endowed Chair in Information Studies, and the founder and director of the Archival Technologies Lab. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London and the University of Liverpool, where he was co-director of the Centre for Archive Studies, following a career in records and archives. His research is concerned with information in international, colonial, and post-colonial contexts. His current projects include Tactical Recordkeeping, exploring the ethical, technical and theoretical problems connected with autonomous weapons systems, archival authenticity, and international jurisprudence, in a book in preparation called Drone Diplomatics. His earlier project, Displacements and Diasporas, resulted in, among other publications, the edited anthologies Displaced Archives (Routledge, 2017) and Disputed Archival Heritage (Routledge, 2022), which won the Society of American Archivists’ Waldo Gifford Leland Award for “writing of superior excellence and usefulness in the field of archival history, theory or practice”. Lowry’s writing has been translated into French, Spanish and Portuguese. He is convenor of Archival Discourses, an international research network that fosters critical enquiry into the intellectual history of archival science, and with Dr. Sumayya Ahmed, he co-edits the Routledge Studies in Archives book series. 

Education

• 2019   Doctorate

Department of Information Studies, University College London, UK

Thesis: Addressing Information Asymmetries in the Social Contract: An Archival-Diplomatic Approach to Open Government Data Curation

• 2006   Master of Information Management (Archives and Record Keeping) 

Department of Media and Information, Curtin University, Australia

Thesis: Legal Deposit Provisions for Cinematograph Films in Australian Federal Legislation. First Class Honours.

• 2003   Bachelor of Arts (English) 

School of Humanities, Flinders University, Australia

Work Experience

Current Positions: 

• Professor, School of Information Studies, Queens College, City University of New York, USA. Spring, 2024 – 

• Director, Archival Technologies Lab, City University of New York, USA. Spring, 2020 – 

• Affiliate Faculty, Digital Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center, 2024 – 

• Affiliate Faculty, Women and Gender Studies, Queens College, 2023 – 

• Honorary Research Fellow, University College London, 2022 – 

• Honorary Research Fellow, Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies, University of Liverpool, UK. 2020 –

• Coordinator, Advanced Certificate in Archives, Queens College, City University of New York, 2025 - 

• Faculty Advisor, Queens College student chapter, Society of American Archivists, 2025 - 

• Convenor, Archival Discourses, the International Intellectual History of Archival Studies research network, 2018 – 

Courses Taught: 

Graduate Center, City University of New York

• DATA74000 Data, Culture and Society

• DHUM78000 Digital Storytelling

Queens College, City University of New York

• INFO 7009 / LBSCI 709 Research in Library and Information Studies

• INFO 7010 Independent Study

• INFO 7083 Book Lab

• INFO 7400 / LBSCI732 Introduction to Archival Studies

• INFO 7501 Data Ethics

• LBSCI 736 Records Management

• LBSCI 752 Digital Preservation

• LBSCI 790.1 Cultural Heritage Repatriation

• LBSCI 790.1 Curatorial Studies

• LBSCI 790.1 Feminist Information Praxis

• LBSCI 790.3 Memory Work

• LBSCI 790.3 Social and Community Informatics

Selected Awards, Honors and Prizes

2023 Winner of the Society of American Archivists’ Waldo Gifford Leland Award for writing of superior excellence and usefulness in the field of archival history, theory or practice, for Disputed Archival Heritage.

2022, Ellen Libretto and Adam Conrad Endowed Chair, Queens College, City University of New York.

2022 Archival History Article Award, Archival History Section, Society of American Archivists, for Linebaugh, R. & Lowry, J. “The Archival Colour Line”.

2021 Global Engagement Award, Conceptual Papers category, International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion (IJIDI) for Chilcott, A., Fife, K., Lowry, J., Moran, J., Oke, A., Sexton, A. & Thethi, J., Against Whitewashing : Structural Racism in the British Archives Sector, invited submission for the International Journal of Information, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2021, special issue ‘On Diversity, Recordkeeping and Archivy’, Ceja, J., Griffin, S. & Sheffield, R. (eds.).

2021 Henry Wasser Award for outstanding research by Assistant Professors in the City University of New York

Digital Records Curation Programme won the Dutch Digital Heritage Network Award for Teaching and Communications in the 2020 Digital Preservation Awards

2020 Innovation Award from the National Digital Stewardship Alliance for the Digital Records Curation Programme

2018 Australian Society of Archivists’ Mander Jones Award, Displaced Archives (2017) was Highly Commended. 

Winner of the 2015 Library Juice Press Paper Contest, for the unpublished paper Information and the Social Contract.

Residencies and Fellowships 

Fellowship, CUNY Center for Place, Culture and Politics, 2026-2027

Invited residency, Faber Arts, Andorra, September 2023

Visiting Fellowship, Nicolaus Copernicus University, Torun, Poland, May - June 2022

Residency, Faber Arts, Sciences & Humanities Residency, Olot, Catalonia, April 2019

Recent Research Grants and Funded Projects

Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support (FOCAS) Internship & Resource Development Project
June 2024 for three years

Value: $505,000 USD

Funder: Mellon Foundation, Public Knowledge Program

FOCAS: Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support is a collective of faculty members representing nine academic institutions across Canada and the United States who are training masters of library and information science (MLIS) students to respond to the needs of community archives. Positioned at the forefront of archival education, our collaborative work will provide a model for cultivating the next generation of information workers as community archives partners and stewards; support community archives of historically underrepresented groups across North America in preserving and making accessible their important histories; and reinvent archives curriculum resources for Library and Information Science (LIS) educators across North America to better respond to the needs of BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, and other minoritized communities.

Dr. James Lowry is leading a FOCAS program at Queens College, CIty University of New York, in partnership with the Lesbian Herstory Archive, the WFMU Radio Archive, the LGBT Center Archive, Interference Archive, and other community archives, with $505,000 in funding from the Mellon Foundation. 

InterPARES Trust AI

2021 - 2026

Value: $2.5 million CAD

Funder: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada

InterPARES Trust AI (2021-2026) was a multi-national interdisciplinary project aiming to design, develop, and leverage Artificial Intelligence to support the ongoing availability and accessibility of trustworthy public records by forming a sustainable, ongoing partnership producing original research, training students and other highly qualified personnel (HQP), and generating a virtuous circle between academia, archival institutions, government records professionals, and industry, a feedback loop reinforcing the knowledge and capabilities of each party. The I Trust AI goals were to:

1. Identify specific AI technologies that can address critical records and archives challenges;

2. Determine the benefits and risks of using AI technologies on records and archives;

3. Ensure that archival concepts and principles inform the development of responsible AI; and

4. Validate outcomes from Objective 3 through case studies and demonstrations.

As part of the InterPARES Trust AI research program, Dr. James Lowry led the Tactical Recordkeeping project based at the Archival Technologies Lab, CIty University of New York. Tactical Recordkeeping has continued after the conclusion of InterPARES Trust AI. Tactical Recordkeeping is investigating the archival dimensions of autonomous weapons systems (AWS).

Recent External Professional Service

Judge, Hugh A. Taylor Prize, Archivaria, Association of Canadian Archivists, 2026

External Advisory Committee member, McGill University Archives Review project, 2023

Judge, Hugh A. Taylor Prize, Archivaria, Association of Canadian Archivists, 2023

Theodore Calvin Pease Award committee, Society of American Archivists, 2022

Co-convenor, Migrated Archives seminar series, University College London, October - December 2022.

Member, Migrated Archives Working Group, University College London, 2022 - 

Member, Program Committee, 2023 Archival Education and Research Institute, June 2023, Louisiana, USA, 2022 – 2023.

Member, International Council on Archives Executive Board, 2022 - 2025

Chair, International Council on Archives Section on Archival Education, 2022 – 2025

Trustee, Fund for the International Development of Archives, 2021 - 

Member, review committee for the Unilever Research Project on the History of William Lever and Lever Brothers Plantations in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Solomon Islands, 2021 – 2025

Member, programme committee, iPres 2022, Glasgow, UK.

Co-Chair, Steering Committee, International Archival Affairs Section of the Society of American Archivists, 2021 – 2023

Member, Creation and Use Working Group, iTrustAI InterPARES Research Programme, 2021- 

Chair, program committee, 2021 Archival Education and Research Institute, 2021

Member, Research Committee, ARMA International Education Foundation, 2021 – 2022

Convenor, Archival Landscapes, seminar series of the International Archival Affairs Section of the Society of American Archivists, 2020 – 2022 

Member, Steering Committee, International Archival Affairs Section of the Society of American Archivists, 2020 – 2023

Member, Advisory Committee, 2nd University of South Africa Biennial International Conference in Library and Information Science Research in Africa (UNILISA), March 2021, virtual conference.

Assessor, International Council on Archives New Professionals Programme, 2020

Member, Program Committee, 9th International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (ICHORA), October 2020, University of Michigan.

Board member, Archival Education and Research Initiative, 2019 – 2022

Member, Program Committee, Archival Education and Research Institute, 2020, Drexel University, USA.

Membership of Societies and Professional Associations 

International Council on Archives

Society of American Archivists

Bibliographical Society of America.

Selected Recent Publications

Edited Anthologies 

Johnstone, R.L. & Lowry, J., International Law and Displaced Archives in Arctic Countries, Brill, Studies in Polar Law series, forthcoming.

Lowry, J., Mosweu, T., Seelakate, P., & Wisniewska-Drewniak, M. (eds.), Archival Pedagogies, Litwin Books, 2026.

Lowry, J. (ed.), Disputed Archival Heritage. Routledge. 2022.

Chapters in Edited Books

Lowry, J., Displaced Archives: Proposing a Research Agenda, article reprinted in Johnstone, R.L. & Lowry, J., International Law and Displaced Archives in Arctic Countries, Brill, Studies in Polar Law series, forthcoming. 

Lowry, J., The Record-as-Command, in Prescott, A. & Wiggins, A. (eds.), Archives: Power, Truth and Fiction, Oxford University Press, 2023.

Lowry, J & Chaterera-Zambuko, F., Lost Unities: The Materiality of the Migrated Archives, in Breakell, S. & Russell, W. (eds.), The Materiality of the Archive: Creative Practice in Context. Routledge. 2023

Lowry, J. & Sexton, A., Open Data and Privacy, in Trust and Records in an Open Digital Environment, Stancic, H. (ed.), Routledge, 2021.

Lowry, J., Assuring Authenticity in Public Sector Data:  A Case Study of the Kenya Open Data Initiative, in A Matter of Trust, Thurston, A. (ed.), University of London Press, 2021.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles and Papers in Conference Proceedings

Betancur Roldán, M.C., Ascensão de Macedo, L.S., & Lowry, J, El Silencio de las reclamaciones archivísticas: Una cartografía inicial en América Latina, Investigación Bibliotecológica: archivonomía, bibliotecología e información, under review.

Lowry, J., Les archives en tant qu’ordres, a translation of ‘The Record As Command’ (see Chapters in Edited Books, above). Trans. MM Lyle. La Gazette des Archives, 274, 2025. 216-236.

Caswell, M., Ahmed, S., Brilmyer, G., Cifor, M., Douglas, J., Lee, J.A., Lowry, J., Reyes, V., Salvatore, C., Sutherland, T., Dang, T.V., “Envisioning a Paid Community Archives Internship Program: Challenges and Opportunities”, Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, July 2024. 65:4, 390-409.

Lowry, J., “The Information Undercommons: Sovereignty, Fugitivity, and Data”, in Silva, Carlos Guardado da, Revez, Jorge, & Corujo, Luís (Eds.). (2024). Dialogues in Information Science: Proceedings of the XIV EDICIC, University of Lisbon. Faculty of Arts, July 1-3, 2024. Lisbon: Center for Classical Studies, Colibri; Costa Rica: EDICIC. 

Lowry, J. Documents Against Documents: The Archival Bond After Displacement, Gli archivi nelle sommosse e nelle guerre: Dall’età napoleonica all’era della cyber war, proceedings, October 2023

Wisniewska-Drewniak, M., Lowry, J. & Kravchenko, N., ‘“Maybe in a few years I'll be able to look at it”: A Preliminary Study of Documentary Issues in the Ukrainian Refugee Experience’, Archival Science, 2022.

Sheik, S., Gilliland, G., Kothe, P. & Lowry, J., Distributed Records in the Rohingya Refugee Diaspora: Arweave and the R-Archive, Journal of Documentation, 2022.

Lowry, J. L’archive inversée : seuils, authenticité et demos, a translation of ‘The Inverted Archive’. Trans. MM Lyle. Revue Archives, 50:1, 2022. 

Lowry, J., O Arquivo Invertido: Limiares, Autenticidade e Demos (povo), a translation of ‘The Inverted Archive’ (see Chapters in Edited Books, above). Trans. Luis Corujo. Boletim do Arquivo da Universidade de Coimbra. 1: 2022. 

Lowry, J., Kinsey, R.L.,; Lusty, A., Hyman, E., Heitjan, P., Rettie, A., & Goetz, K., No Manuals: Archives Administration 100 Years After Jenkinson’s Manual, Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies: Vol. 8 , Article 17. 2021.

Linebaugh, R. & Lowry, J., The Archival Colour Line: Race, Records and Postcolonial Custody, Archives and Records. 2021. Winner of the 2022 Archival History Article Award, Society of American Archivists.

Chilcott, A., Fife, K., Lowry, J., Moran, J., Oke, A., Sexton, A. & Thethi, J., Against Whitewashing : Structural Racism in the British Archives Sector, invited submission for the International Journal of Information, Diversity and Inclusion, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2021, special issue ‘On Diversity, Recordkeeping and Archivy’, Ceja, J., Griffin, S. & Sheffield, R. (eds.).

Recent Keynotes, Plenaries and Invited Lectures

Invited speaker, University of Malta, May 2026.

Invited speaker, Introduction to Archival Enterprise, class at the University of Texas at Austin, 7 October 2024.

An Information Undercommons: Sovereignty, Fugitivity and Data, The Association for Education and Research in Information Science of Ibero-America and the Caribbean, keynote, 1 July 2024, Lisbon, Portugal.

Invited panellist, Trauma Informed Archival Education, 2023 Congress of the International Council on Archives, Abu Dhabi, 9-13 October 2023.

Disputed Heritage: Andorran Archives Beyond the Border, invited lecture at the National Library of Andorra, 27 September 2023.

Invited panellist, Westchester Library Association, 86th Annual Meeting, 12 May 2023.

Whiteness as Provenance, invited lecture, University of British Columbia, Canada, 1 March 2023.

Notes on an Imperial Discourse Network, invited lecture, Society of American Archivists Archival History Section Annual Lecture, with Riley Linebaugh, 1 February 2023

Autoethnographic Pedagogy and Radical Empathy, invited lecture at University of California, Los Angeles, 1 February 2023.

Archival Sovereignties: From the Peace of Westphalia to the Vienna Convention, invited lecture for the Dalhousie University Antiracism and Decolonization in Archival Studies Open Classroom Series, 16 November 2022.

Whiteness as Provenance, invited talk for the Department of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, 14 November 2022.

Archival Technologies: Making Biocapitalism, Annual Archives Lecture, Department of Information Studies, University of South Africa, 10 November 2022.

Invited remarks, Archiving Caribbean Identity book launch, University of the West Indies, 26 October 2022.

Keynote, ‘Archival Technologies and Biocapitalism’, Escuela Interamericana de Bibliotecologia, Medellin, Colombia, 6 October 2022.

Invited speaker, History, Politics, Law: In Conversation, Bentham House, University College London, 15 July 2022.

Invited speaker, book launch, Farrugia, C. (ed.) Images of Empire, National Archives of Malta, 14 July 2022.

Keynote at the Polish Archival Students Congress, Nicolaus Copernicus University, 1 June 2022.

Reconceptualising Provenance, invited talk at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland, 31 May 2022, Torun, Poland.

Disputed Archival Heritage, invited talk at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland, 25 May 2022, Torun, Poland.

Design Justice in Records Systems: The COVID Pandemic and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, keynote for 4th Department of Library and Information Studies Conference, University of Botswana, 27 April 2022, Gaborone, Botswana (virtual)

Archival Sovereignties, Feliks Gross and Henry Wasser Lecture, City University of New York Academy, 8 April 2022.

Archives and Colonial Power, invited talk at University College London, January 2022, London, UK (virtual).

Invited panellist, VIII Toruńskie Konfrontacje Archiwalne, 2 December 2021, University of Torun, Poland (virtual)

A Critical Records Management, keynote at the Nigerian Association of Professional Archivists conference, 28 – 30 November 2021, Port Harcourt, Nigeria (virtual).

Documents Against Documents: Unity and the Archival Bond in Conflict, keynote at Archives during Rebellions and Wars: From the Age of Napoleon to the Cyber War Era, 3 – 6 November 2021, Milan, Italy (virtual).

Invited speaker, United Nations World Data Forum, 3 – 6 October 2021, Bern, Switzerland (virtual).

Shared Archival Heritage and Territorial Provenance, keynote at the West Nordic Archive Conference, Tórshavn, Faroe Islands, 30 August - 3 September 2021.

Invited talk on archival sovereignties, Critical Archives Reading Group, University of Melbourne, 23 June 2021, Melbourne, Australia (virtual).

Archival Sovereignty: Towards a New Archival Principle, University College Dublin and the Archives and Records Association (Ireland) Social Justice and Archives seminar series, 13 May 2021 (virtual).

Invited presentation with Gilliland, A. & Carbone, K., ‘Refugee Rights in Records’, Solidarity in Culture: Heritage Protection Under Conditions of Crisis, National and University Library in Zagreb, 18 – 20 March 2021 (virtual).

Invited talk on anticolonial archival pedagogy for Decolonising Archives session of Botany, Trade and Empire: Exploring Kew’s Miscellaneous Reports Collection, conference hosted by Black Cultural Archives and Royal Botanic Gardens, UK, 4 March 2021 (virtual).

The Repatriation of Records: The Case of the Migrated Archive, invited talk at the University of Botswana, 12 November 2020 (virtual).

Archives and Colonial Power, invited talk at University College London, 24 January 2020, London, UK.

Records Management and the Sustainable Development Goals, keynote, 3rd annual conference of the Kenya Association of Records Managers and Archivists, 4-6 November 2019, Mombasa, Kenya.

Developments Around the Migrated Archive since the Hanslope Disclosure, invited talk at the University of Botswana, 7 August 2019, Gaborone, Botswana.

Conference Papers

McGee, P. & Lowry, J., Tactical Recordkeeping: Archival Perspectives on Evidence from Autonomous Weapons, Archival Education and Research Institute, 20-24 July 2026, Vancouver, Canada. 

Lowry, J., Repatriation: interrogating an archival ideal, New Perspectives on Displaced Colonial Archives, virtual, 11 & 12 September 2024.

Lowry, J., (Critical) Intellectual History in Archival Studies, International Conference on the History of Records and Archives, 29 July 2022.

Lowry, J., Whiteness as Provenance, Provenance in Place symposium, virtual, 7 March 2022.

Carbone, K., Gilliland, A. & Lowry, J., Archival Duties and Responsibilities to Refugees: Introducing A Rights in Records Framework, 6th Croatian ICARUS Days, 25 March 2021, online.

Lowry, J., Registration Across Technologies: The Inscription of Value in Paper and Digital Records Systems, International Conference on the History of Records and Archives, October 2020, online.

Lowry, J., Archival Sovereignty in the Official Mind, Archival Education and Research Institute, 6-10 July 2020, online.

Lowry, J., Before Computational Archival Science, Archives and Records Association conference, 28-30 August 2019, Leeds, UK.

Lowry, J., The Inverted Archive: Thresholds, Authenticity and the Demos, Archival Education and Research Institute, 8-12 July 2019, Liverpool, UK.

Workshops, Short Courses and Summer Schools

Digital Storytelling for Digital Portfolios, workshop with Asma A. Neblett, CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies, 30 March 2023, virtual.

Managing Digital Archives, workshop with Margaret Crockett, Nancy McGovern and Kari Smith for the International Council on Archives 15 Oct and 1 Nov 2021, virtual.

Editorial Work, workshop for the Archival Education and Research Institute, 12 – 16 July 2021, virtual.

Teaching Towards Rights in Records, workshop with Kathy Carbone for the Archival Education and Research Institute, 12 – 16 July 2021, virtual.

Autoethnographic Pedagogy: Student Expertise and Learning in Community, workshop for Transformative Learning in the Humanities, City University of New York, with Nerve Macaspac and Cynthia Tobar, 17 March 2021.

Digital Tools and Environment in the Era of Artificial Intelligence, course for the Bachelor in Records Management and Archival Science, Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi, January 2021.

Digital Records Preservation workshop, with Juliet Erima, 3rd annual conference of the Kenya Association of Records Managers and Archivists, 5 November 2019, Mombasa, Kenya.

Surfacing Provenance in Shared Archival Heritage workshop for the Forum of National Archivists, with Njörður Sigurðsson, Adelaide, Australia, 23 October 2019.

Digital Records Curation Programme (DRCP) Study School for Archival Educators, with Margaret Crockett, University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana, 5-9 August 2019.

Preservation of Documentary Heritage for Peace workshop, with Alex Miskin and Cherry Leonardi, Juba Community Learning Centre, Whitaker Peace and Development Initiative, Juba, South Sudan, 24 July 2019.

Editorial and Peer Review Activity 

Recent Editorship of Special Issues and Conference Proceedings 

Bastian, J., Griffin, S., & Lowry, J. (eds.), Archival Science special issue on provenance, Vol. 24:4, 2024.

Hawkins, A., Lee, E. & Lowry, J. (eds.), Archives and Records special issue on student and new professional research, Vol. 44:1, 2023.

Sutherland, T. & Lowry, J. (eds.), Education for Information – Interdisciplinary Journal of Information Studies special issue: Selected Papers from the 2019 Archival Education and Research Institute, Vol. 37:1, 2021

Lowry, J. & MacNeil, H. (eds.), Archival Thinking; Archaeologies and Geneaologies, special issue of Archival Science, 21:1, 2021.

Wood, S., Lowry, J. & Lau, A. (eds.) Information / Control: Control is the Age of Post-Truth, special issue of the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies, Vol.2, No. 2., 2019 (published 2020). https://doi.org/10.24242/jclis.v2i2.154

Monograph series editor: Routledge Studies in Archives series editor, founding editor 2018 – 2023, co-editor with Dr. Sumayya Ahmed from 2023.

Journal editorial boards: Archival Science, 2025 - ; Tabula: Estudios archivísticos de Castilla y León, 2024 - ; The American Archivist, 2024 – 2028; Archivaria, 2023 – 2026; Journal of the South African Society of Archivists, 2019 – 2022, 2022 – 2025; ESARBICA Journal: Journal of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Branch of the International Council on Archives, 2019 - 2021; Journal of the Society of Nigerian Archivists, 2017 - 2021; Archives and Manuscripts: The Journal of the Australian Society of Archivists, 2015 - 2025; Archives and Records: The Journal of the [UK] Archives and Records Association, 2013 - 2023.

Manuscript reviewer for AI and Society; Archival Science; Archivaria; Archives, the Journal of the British Records Association; Archives and Manuscripts; Archives and Records; Aslib Journal of Information Management; Critical Arts; Education for Information – Interdisciplinary Journal of Information Studies; ESARBICA Journal; Feminist Review; Information and Culture; International Journal of Digital Curation; International Journal of Information, Diversity and Inclusion; International Political Sociology; Journal for Cultural Research; Journal of Librarianship and Information Science; Journal of Open Humanities Data; Journal of the South African Society of Archivists; Library and Information Science Research; Media History; Modern and Contemporary France; Nature and Anthropology; Organization Studies; Patterns; Preservation, Digital Technology and Culture; Postcolonial Literature and Arts; Records Management Journal; Refuge: Canada’s Journal on Refugees; South African Journal of Information Management.