European Research After the Archival Turn: A Response to Sonja de Leeuw’s Article ‘The Archive as Network’

Abstract

In 2012, Professor Sonja de Leeuw discussed how the Archival Turn will allow four developments to happen, among which was the possibility for research to cross national borders, allowing more transnational and European research. Now, roughly 10 years after the article was published, is a good moment to see how far on this journey we currently are. This article maps out these four developments with emphasis on the ‘European-ness’ of current research, to show the remaining bottlenecks such as language barriers, and funding and accessibility issues. A discussion with members of FIAT/IFTA held in 2021 will show how collaborative research can be one way to improve conditions for transnational research.

Keywords

• Archival turn
• Borders
• Europe
• Accessibility
• Transnational research