2025 - November and December - page 28
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| Issue number | 404 |
|---|---|
| ISSN | 2632-7171 |
| Publication date | 1st November 2025 |
| Transcription |
magazine Feature Medicine and the Making of Race Conference May 2025. organisational change, however imperfect. The work that archivists have done, separately and collectively, matters. This is, for want of a better word, an interesting moment. No UK government has apologised for slavery and since coming to power in May 2024, Labour has doubled down on this silence. In the USA, current policies are actively rolling back on EDI and politicising aspects of the past. On the other hand, there is a clear momentum at grassroots level for this work, and with the approaching bicentenary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 2033, it appears likely that demand for accountability and ‘reckoning’ will continue to grow. Membership in our network is confidential, since many of its members operate within significant institutional constraints. This article is one way I can thank its members. As our testimonies and focus groups make clear, their generous participation has been transformative for specific projects and for the emergence of new projects. It has also enriched my own understanding, not just of the archives I’ve always loved, but of how the past is accessed, shaped, and made available by those who care for collections. If you are working in this area or on a project of this nature and would like to join the network please get in touch at mmor@kcl.ac.uk. You can also find further detail of our project and events at our website. The 28 Projects have led to new findings, to recontextualised exhibits and to changing harmful cataloguing terminology: but they have also driven organisational change, however imperfect. The work that archivists have done, separately and collectively, matters. toolkit will be formally launched in 2026 – if you would like to be added to the mailing list for the launch please email, or follow our website for registration details. About the author Hannah Murphy is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at King’s College London and Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. She is currently Principal Investigator of MMoR (Medicine and the Making of Race) a £2 million seven-year collaborative project, funded by a UKRI Future Leaders’ Fellowship. |