Speaker: Joshua Shifrinson, SPP
Abstract: What are the strengths and limitations of archival research for international relations (IR) topics? As a field, IR seeks to uncover patterns of behavior generated by the choices and interactions of sovereign actors in world politics. Despite this “real world” focus, however, scholars have broadly failed to leverage or deploy archival evidence - that is, data from historical records generated by actors of interest - in support of their topics; those that have, meanwhile, have done so without discussion of the merits and drawbacks of the medium or a clear sense of analytic best practices This project fills the gap. Drawing on over a decade of work across multiple archives, interviews with archivists, and a meta review of archivally-based projects, this project unpacks what archival evidence entails, the ways in which it can contribute to a research project, highlights biases in archival material, and explores best research practices. The result offers both a logic of archival research for IR, as well as a practical guide to executing archival work.