To explore the landscape of collections and archives holding HIV-related records and how they have been used for research or in creative practices, The National Archives hosted two events in December 2024 – an online symposium and a digital humanities workshop – bringing together archivists, scholars, researchers, and creative practitioners.
The National Archives holds an extensive collection of material related to the HIV and AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. This includes cabinet papers and records documenting the government response, public health campaigns and scientific research, and records connected with the many intersections between the government and governmental bodies and the spread and effects of the virus (in blog posts, The AIDS health campaign and HIV/AIDS and the LGBTQ+ community).
The National Archives’ records tell a limited story of the spread of HIV in the UK. As official documents of the state, they rarely convey anything of the lived experiences and emotions of people who lived with or in proximity to the virus. Such histories are often preserved elsewhere, by voluntary groups and in community archives. Though they offer different takes on historical facts, both are necessary and valuable.
The workshop
The in-person digital humanities workshop on 2 December was open to a limited number of people (selected through an expression of interest process) and focused on the ‘1987 AIDS Advertising Evaluation Dataset’, an openly accessible dataset produced at the time of the 1987 Public Health Campaign.
Attendees learnt how raw data was transformed into a more easily accessible database, and how it can unlock opportunities for digital storytelling. At the same time, the workshop provided a space to think about how such datasets might reflect social sciences historical biases which must be taken into consideration when using them for digital scholarship.
The symposium
The free online symposium on 3 December brought together researchers, historians, archivists, scholars, and creative practitioners who have worked with HIV and AIDS related documents.
Download the full programme (PDF, 0.3 MB)