Teaching Tandanya in Palestine and Lebanon: Liberatory Pedagogy for Archival Sovereignty

Jamila J. Ghaddar; Ana Roeschley; Mariam Karim; Hanine Shehadeh; Rima Ghanem; Fatima  el-Bazzal; Rami Zurayk

doi:10.37683/asa.v53.11069

Jamila J. Ghaddar Archival Information & Digital Humanities, Media Studies Department, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Founding Director, Archives & Digital Media Lab, Beirut, Lebanon
Ana Roeschley Archival Studies Program, University of North Texas, Denton, USA
Mariam Karim Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South, Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, Qatar
Hanine Shehadeh New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Rima Ghanem Archives and Digital Media Lab, Beirut, Lebanon
Fatima el-Bazzal Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon
Rami Zurayk Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37683/asa.v53.11069

Keywords: Archival sovereignty, Decolonial archival praxis, Participatory archiving, Anti-colonial methods, Archival pedagogy, Tandanya Declaration, International Council on Archives, Emergency heritage response, Genocide, Gaza, South Lebanon, Palestine, Archives destruction and looting, Settler colonialism, Ongoing Nakba

Abstract

This article discusses how The Adelaide-Tandanya Declaration has been incorporated as a pedagogical tool within the training components of the project, Fighting Erasure: Digitizing Gaza’s Genocide & the War on Lebanon, a collaborative archival initiative delivering emergency mitigation and digitization training to heritage stewards and information professionals focused on Palestine and Lebanon against the backdrop of expanding genocide and settler colonialism. Grounded in bell hooks’ pedagogy of hope and decolonial archival praxis, the authors explain how The Declaration’s insistence on indigenous archival sovereignty opened space to teach eurocentric archival standards and practices otherwise – critically, openly, and less oppressively. The article situates the course within broader struggles for archival sovereignty and liberatory pedagogy, outlining how the curriculum integrates foundational archival practices – on description, digitization, and emergency mitigation – with critical approaches that foreground community knowledge, anti-colonial frameworks, and principles of stewardship. Drawing on experiences from multiple rounds of training, the authors reflect on the challenges of translating and teaching archival standards, methods, and practices across linguistic, cultural, and political contexts while resisting the eurocentric assumptions embedded in archival science. Particular attention is given to the role of collective learning, translation, and contextualization in shaping an approach to archival education rooted in solidarity and resistance. The article further reflects on the challenges, contradictions, and possibilities of teaching for liberation in active war zones and argues that teaching archival practice in contexts of crisis can function as a form of community defense, supporting local actors in safeguarding memory, asserting narrative authority, and mobilizing archives as tools for justice and liberation.

Author Biographies

Jamila J. Ghaddar, Archival Information & Digital Humanities, Media Studies Department, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Founding Director, Archives & Digital Media Lab, Beirut, Lebanon

Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar is a South Lebanese archivist, historian, and educator. She is Assistant Professor in Archival Information & Digital Humanities at the University of Amsterdam, founding director of the Archives & Digital Media Lab, and a Research Affiliate at the American University of Beirut’s School of Architecture & Design. Ghaddar serves as Co-Chair of the International Council on Archives’ Palestine Archives Task Force; and Chair of the MELA’s ARM Training & Advocacy Group. Ghaddar serves as a co-lead with Dr. Rami Zurayk and Dr. Hanine Shehadeh of the project, Fighting Erasure: Digitizing Gaza’s Genocide and the War on Lebanon.

Ana Roeschley, Archival Studies Program, University of North Texas, Denton, USA

Dr. Ana Roeschley is Assistant Professor and Director of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Science at the University of North Texas. She is the founder and Co-Director of two research labs: the Archives Learning Lab – dedicated to investigating the relationships between people and archives in an ever-changing world; and the Computational Humanities and Information Literacy Lab – an interdisciplinary lab focused on the exploration of social and technological issues impacting human culture, heritage, and the arts and humanities. Her research on personal and participatory archiving practices, as well as her own experiences as a refugee, led Roeschley to her role as the Principal Investigator of Records of Refuge: Supporting Refugee Communities’ Archival Needs (RoR), an applied research study aiming to close gaps on the documentary and archival needs of refugees in the United States. Through her work with RoR, Roeschley co-founded the Our Refugee Stories Archive, a community-based archival initiative to create digital collections for and by refugees, as well as openly available resources on best practices for archiving personal records for personal use.

Mariam Karim, Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South, Northwestern University in Qatar, Doha, Qatar

Dr. Mariam Karim is a Global Postdoctoral Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (#IAS_NUQ) and the founder of the digital humanities project, Nasawiyyah: Arab Media History. She is a member of the Steering Council of the Archives & Digital Media Lab where she also serves as a Feminist Histories & Archival Fellow. Karim completed her PhD at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information (iSchool) and the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI). She served as an inaugural graduate fellow at the University of Toronto’s Critical Digital Humanities Initiative (CDHI) and was the recipient of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) doctoral award. Her research agenda explores Arab Feminist Media from the 20th century. She situates contemporary uses of digital media through historical inquiry and studies Arabic mass-media in the context of media imperialism and colonialism. Read her work in Communication, Culture & Critique and First Monday.

Hanine Shehadeh, New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, UAE

Dr. Hanine Shehadeh is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities at NY Abu Dhabi. Her research focuses on the intersections between settler colonialism, climate change, and new media. She is deconstructing the global framing of climate change and environmental justice, exploring how these issues are intricately tied to the settler-colonial reality in Palestine. Her academic work interrogates how new media landscapes can reinforce or resist digital colonialism, particularly in relation to indigenous identities and colonial subjugation. She contributes to a collaborative project with the Center for Advanced Mathematical Sciences at AUB, examining the dynamics of settler colonialism and its socio-political implications. Dr. Shehadeh earned her Ph.D. in Intellectual History from the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Her dissertation, which explored the historical construction of the ‘dishonorable Jew’ in European Christian antisemitism and Zionism, was nominated for Columbia University’s Salo and Jeanette Baron Prize in Jewish Studies. She is also a recipient of Columbia University’s Humanities War and Peace Initiative award for her work on affect formation in settler-colonial societies.

Rima Ghanem, Archives and Digital Media Lab, Beirut, Lebanon

Rima Ghanem is a Lebanese archivist. She holds a Master in Archival Studies (MAS) from the University of British Columbia and a Master in Tourism and Cultural Management from the Saint Joseph University of Beirut. Her previous work experience includes a variety of roles within the heritage and cultural sector: she served as Research Assistant at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, as Cultural Sector Research Analyst at a tech company specialized in information management and heritage software development, and as Lead Archivist for the Taku River Tlingit First Nation. Rima currently works in archives and information management in the humanitarian sector.

Fatima el-Bazzal , Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon

Fatima el-Bazzal is a doctoral researcher at the Bibliotheca Arabica project (2024–). She holds a Master of Arts in Information Sciences and a Bachelor of Arts in Library and Information Management from the Lebanese University. She has extensive library and archival experience, having worked as a Metadata and Reference Librarian at the Lebanese National Library, where she contributed to cataloging, policy development, and the relocation of the library’s collection. Fatima has also participated in archival projects like the Virtual Museum of Censorship with MARCH Lebanon and the Feminist Library of the Knowledge Workshop, as well as a project on the personal library and archive of the late Professor Hassan Chalabi, in Beirut. Her Ph.D. project focuses on the manuscript heritage of the Jabal ʿĀmil region, specifically the endowed collection of Asad Allāh ibn Muhammad Muʾmin al-Khātūnī al-ʿĀmilī in the Astān Quds Library, Mashhad, Iran, which was donated in the year 1067 AH/1657 AD. Fatima’s research explores the provenance history of this collection, placing it within the context of the migration of ʿĀmilī scholars to Safavid Iran, who attained various academic and administrative positions in the emerging Safavid state and played a significant role in reshaping the religious identity of the Safavid Empire.

Rami Zurayk, Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

Dr. Rami Zurayk is a professor at the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut, Landscape Design and Ecosystem Management Department. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) of the Committee of World Food Security (CFS) from 2015 to 2019, and a commissioner on the EAT-Lancet commission on sustainable diets from sustainable food systems. He is a founding member of the Arab Food Sovereignty Network, an advisory board member of SEAL (Social and Economic Action for Lebanon), and an advisory board member for the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development. He has worked and written extensively on the Arab World, focusing on the political ecology of Arab food security and its linkages with the agrarian question. His latest work on the subject includes: Crisis and Conflict in Agriculture (CABI, 2018), The Agrarian Roots of the Arab Uprisings (with Anne Gough, Cambridge, 2014); Control Food, Control People: The Struggle for Food Security in Gaza (with Anne Gough, IPS, 2013) Food, Farming and Freedom: Sowing the Arab Spring (Just World Books, 2011). He obtained his BSc and MSc from the American University of Beirut and his DPhil from Oxford University.