Accidental Archives

Accidental Archives examines large digital collections that became available for historical research by routes their creators rarely intended, from rescued web archives and data dumps to materials disclosed by leaks, hacks, and legal proceedings.

These collections are neither conventional archives nor neutral samples of a lost whole. Each carries a particular history of selection, extraction, survival, custody, and access that determines what can be observed and what remains absent. The project studies those histories as part of the evidence itself, while developing ways to investigate collections whose scale and heterogeneity exceed individual inspection.