Archives in Dialogue is a digital humanities initiative based at the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at New York University that advances equitable exchange between archival institutions and community-based projects in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and those in the United States. Through a series of thematically driven webinars and collaborative digital activities, the project creates a shared public platform for archivists, scholars, and cultural practitioners to address ethical and methodological challenges of archiving, circulating, and writing alternative histories across geopolitical divides.     

        At its core, Archives in Dialogue fosters cross-regional exchange between diverse archival efforts, from community-based initiatives to established institutions, around key issues such as:

• Collecting and curating multimedia materials from the MENA region

• Innovative methods for activating and engaging with archives throughout the region

• Preserving and accessing archives amid conflict, displacement, and political instability

• Critical archival practices and community-based initiatives

The project engages critical debates in archival practice, digital humanities, and decolonial methodologies, addressing the ethical dimensions of collaborative scholarship and the politics of representation. It highlights how digital tools and archival practices can recover marginalized Arab and Arab American voices, reshape community-based scholarship, and inspire new forms of storytelling. To this end, the project foregrounds institutional and community-based archival practices while experimenting with Archive 2.0 methodologies that activate archival material through digital storytelling and creative activations. These methods invite users to interact with, reinterpret, and contribute context to archival objects, thus transforming static materials into living archives that reflect plural experiences and memories.

 In addition to advancing scholarly and professional dialogue, Archives in Dialogue offers undergraduate and graduate students opportunities to engage directly with participating archives through internships and research collaborations. The project strengthens transnational collaboration networks and models a new form of scholarly infrastructure that resists extractive research paradigms, centers marginalized epistemologies and transforms how digital tools can facilitate equitable access and cross-cultural dialogue.

For more information, please contact Roxana Maria Arăş at r.aras@nyu.edu.