When saving becomes loss: Archival memory in the digital age

About the Annual Digital Lecture

Exploration of digital ideas is an important part of archival work. The Annual Digital Lecture (ADL) offers the opportunity to hear from a leading speaker on a topic related to digital research, in addition to highlighting some of the innovative digital work happening at The National Archives and at the School of Advanced Study (SAS), University of London.

Annual Digital Lecture 2025 speaker

The speaker for The National Archives' Annual Digital Lecture 2025, in partnership with the School of Advanced Study, is Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Associate Professor at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen. Please join us in-person at Senate House to hear this year's Annual Digital Lecture.

When saving becomes loss: Archival memory in the digital age

We often think of archives as safe houses for memory—repositories that preserve the past against the erosions of time. Yet in the digital age, the very act of preservation generates its own losses. Drawing on the ERC-funded ‘Data Loss’-project, this lecture explores how attempts to safeguard archival memory inevitably transform, constrain, and sometimes erase the records archivists seek to protect. File conversions fix what was once flexible; appraisal decisions consign vast amounts to oblivion; storage technologies slowly decay. Preservation, in other words, is never a neutral act of keeping, but a process that makes and unmakes the past at once.

By attending to these paradoxes, the lecture explores what it means to remember—and to lose—in a digital age, highlighting how loss is not merely an accidental by-product of datafication but an integral, politically charged phenomenon. In European societies, where public and private organizations increasingly confront complex data loss challenges, the ways in which loss is managed carry significant implications for individuals, organizations, and democratic structures alike. The lecture thus situates data loss at the heart of contemporary debates, prompting reflection on its effects on everyday life, the governance of digital memory, and the protection of fundamental rights in emerging geopolitical computational regimes.

Programme

18:00-19:00: Talk and discussion

19:00-20:00: Reception and poster exhibition with posters showcasing digital research from The National Archives and Digital Humanities Research Hub (DHRH) at the School of Advanced Study.

Speaker’s biography

Nanna Bonde Thylstrup’s research explores the politics, practices, and infrastructures of digital knowledge and culture, with a focus on archives, datafication, and memory. She is the author of The Politics of Mass Digitization and co-editor of Uncertain Archives: Critical Keywords for Big Data and has contributed to debates on digital humanities, platform governance, and knowledge infrastructures. Thylstrup is currently PI of the ERC-funded research project Data Loss: the Politics of Disappearance, Destruction and Dispossession in Digital Societies.

Information about event and location

This event will take place in-person at Senate House, London, in Chancellor's Hall. The room is wheelchair accessible. If you have any accessibility requirements, please let us know via the order form when you register. If you have any questions about the event, please email research@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

In the event of a tube strike, the University of London Senate House is within walking distance of three national railway stations, London St Pancras (c. 18 mins), London King’s Cross (c. 18 mins) and London Euston (c. 12 mins). The nearest bus stops are Tottenham Court Road or Russell Square (Numbers 1, 24, 29, 68, 73, 91 and 390).

Please note that photography might take place during the event. If you would like to withdraw your consent, please email research@nationalarchives.gov.uk.

Image credit: FO850-234 Colossus electronic digital computer, 1943.