Gracen Brilmyer’s work on community archiving focuses on elevating the voices and practices of historically marginalized communities, emphasizing the unique challenges and contributions their smaller, grassroots organizations bring to the field of archival studies.
Earlier this fall, the Assistant Professor at McGill’s School of Information Studies (SIS) received $520,000 CAD from the Mellon Foundation that will advance inclusion in tangible ways.
A significant portion of that grant will go toward the development of an internship program that will place McGill archival studies students in Montreal-based community archives. Brilmyer will be working with post-doctoral fellow, Axelle Demus to build the local program and conduct research on community archives.
Brilmyer said the aim is to introduce students to the unique archival processes used in these organizations, which may differ greatly from those of larger, more traditional institutions. As well, the community archives will benefit from the extra help.
The importance of representation
A key part of Brilmyer’s work is to foster greater representation within the field of archival studies.
“As a queer disabled person growing up, I didn’t often see myself represented. Now, through my work in the Disability Archives Lab, I get to build projects specifically by and for disabled people to think about how we want to be documented, how we want to see ourselves in more complicated ways,” they said. Complex representation is important because “disability is not a monolith, and disabled people have many different intersecting identities and experiences.”
Multiply-marginalized people can be erased in history through their under-representation and the lack of their voices in archives. Conversely, inclusion – in all its nuance and complexity – brings richness to the collective identity, Brilmyer said.
Community archives counteract the erasure of underrepresented groups, offering an alternative to mainstream archives that often have been shaped by dominant perspectives. These community archives – such as the Archives gaies du Québec, the South Asian American Digital Archive and the Little Tokyo Historical Society – are each dedicated to preserving their community’s history and nuances of their community.
By facilitating these experiences, Brilmyer seeks to help students understand the importance of preserving their own cultural and community histories.
“A big piece of this project is giving people from historically marginalized or minoritized communities the opportunity to encounter perspectives that are like theirs,” they said.
The FOCAS collective
Brilmyer is part of Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support (FOCAS), a collaboration among faculty from nine universities in the United States and Canada. Earlier this fall, the Mellon Foundation awarded FOCAS $6,150,000 USD to support paid internships at community archives; Brilmyer’s grant was part of that award.
The three-year program, funded by the foundation’s Public Knowledge program, will see archival studies students placed in more than 40 community archives across North America. The project will also support curricular development, directly fund community archives for their services and expertise and fund student participation in conferences and professional associations.
The importance of genuine accessibility
The internship program is just one aspect of Brilmyer’s broader research initiative, which also explores the intersection of disability and community archiving. As the lead of the Disability Archives Lab, Brilmyer is investigating how disability is represented in community archives, how these archives address accessibility and how disabled individuals interact with these spaces.
“What really stood out to me in my previous research was that many different types of archives are facing accessibility issues both at a fundamental level and also at a more nuanced level,” they said.
Brilmyer stresses that accessibility is not just about basic accommodations; it means considering the full range of experiences individuals with disabilities may have when engaging with archives.
“Accessibility is not a simple checklist. It’s not just installing a ramp and making sure your bathrooms have grab rails,” they said. “It involves thinking about accessibility in an expansive way for disabled, sick, chronically ill, and neurodiverse people and rethinking how different bodies and minds experience space and research.”
Making room for minority voices in archival scholarship
Brilmyer’s work is focused on reshaping the dominant narratives within archival scholarship. While mainstream archival practices have often prioritized the perspectives of the majority, marginalized communities have long maintained their own methods of knowledge preservation, through oral traditions, written records or other means.
Ultimately, Brilmyer’s work is about rethinking who gets to tell their story and how those stories are documented. The researcher is helping to redefine the future of archival studies, ensuring that all histories, not least those of marginalized communities, are remembered and celebrated.