Workshop 1 - ICEDEG 2026

Title: Digital Memory and Archives in Crises

Workshop Outline:

The targeted and/or unintentional destruction of cultural heritage in crises undermines our collective memory and can jeopardize democratic institution-building, reconciliation and justice processes, and the exercising of individual and collective agency. This workshop connects scholars, practitioners, artists, technologists, policymakers, community groups, and multilateral organizations (e.g., UNESCO, ICCROM, ICOMOS, etc.) who are working at the intersection of cultural preservation and safeguarding, digital rights and justice, reconciliation and reparations, and community care. Prospective attendees will be asked to share a case study, creative work (poetry, music, visual art, etc.), or short paper/story related to the session topics.

Objectives

Identify barriers of and risks of using digital tech to preserve memory in crises and diasporic contexts.
Share case studies, best practices, and lessons on how communities leverage digital tools and/or resist against tech-facilitated harms in the context of cultural preservation, continuity, and wellbeing.
Co-create visions for just, liberatory, and caring futures and memoryscapes.
Foster collaboration between academia, policy, activism, and practice in governance structures, frameworks, and practices.
Advance scholarship on digital memory and archiving through an integrated critical, intersectional, feminist, rights-based, liberatory approach.

Co-hosted by UNU-EGOV and AMPL Labs, this workshop is part of the Safe(D) CHIC initiative, which critically examines the role of (digital) technologies in both undermining and protecting cultural heritage. Digital memory and archiving is an emergent area of focus, with research responding to key questions:

Who is responsible for and is afforded the opportunity to curate and steward digital memory?
How do Global Majority and marginalized communities (including Indigenous, Black, racialized, disabled, queer, and displaced persons) exercise their agency in digital memory and archiving processes?
How resilient and sustainable is the act of digital archiving in the face of climate, environmental, health political, and economic risks and disasters?
Whose memories and cultures are prioritized/elevated or erased/undermined by digital technologies?
Which existing policy and governance mechanisms could be leveraged to safeguard cultures in crises?
What is an ethics of care, and how can it be applied to digital memory and archiving work?

AMPL Labs and UNU-EGOV will co-produce an interactive/creative workshop report or zine, in collaboration with workshop co-chairs. Insights from the workshop will contribute to the development of a research paper positioned for publication in a leading journal on cultural and/or digital governance. Workshop participants will be invited to join the Safe(D) CHIC Community of Practice (launch date forthcoming) to identify opportunities to engage in joint advocacy, research, co-learning, and resource sharing to responsibly design and use technologies and mitigate tech-facilitated harms to meaningfully safeguard cultural heritage in crises.

Anticipated Workshop Outputs

Identification of at least 4 case studies or real-world examples of community digital archiving
Workshop report/zine
Research Paper: Digital Memory and Archives in Crises
Visualization(s) of visioning and narrative exercises, where feasible

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Tutorial Instructors

Bushra Ebadi (she/her/ānhā) is a first-generation Afghan Canadian researcher, social innovator, and writer committed to nurturing and stewarding deeply rooted communities and transforming systems to promote individual and collective wellbeing, agency, and rights. Bushra uses a relational, liberatory approach in her artistic and research practice, crafting poetry, narratives, recipes, and spaces to imagine and co-create expansive futures and "Grow Gardens" rooted in anti-colonial justice and ecological wellbeing. At UNU-EGOV, she is leading policy-oriented research on climate justice and tech, digital rights, decolonizing technology, and safeguarding cultural heritage.
Estrella Luna Muñoz (she/her) is a researcher at the NOVA Institute of Communication in Lisbon, Portugal, with the CEMILLYA project - Civic Education through Media and Information Literacy Led by Young Adults. She specializes in utilizing media and arts to empower young people in civic participation and social integration in vulnerable contexts. She is a representative of the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Alliance and a member of the North American and European Chapter. She is a member of the Portuguese team of the EU Kids Online network and of the research group of the PRODIGI- Promoting Resilience and Online Digital and Informational Skills European Project. With a Ph.D. in Education with Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and a master’s degree in Artistic Production, she has been working as a Media and Information Literacy Professor in educational institutions. She is also a trainer for teachers in the Plano Nacional das Artes in Portugal. She aspires to inspire, empower, and support young people to lead the way towards a more inclusive, fair, resilient, and regenerative society.
Mayowa Tomori (he/they) is an award-winning Nigerian-American artist and creative technologist, passionate about building digital products and interactive experience using art, mixed reality and other emerging media. Mayowa contributes experience and expertise in community-centred digital literacy, storytelling through interactive design and multimedia production, and decolonizing cultural spaces and institutions. Highlights of their digital archival and art works include Queer Icons, Casting Memories, and Mixtapes & Memory. Their work has been supported by fellowships and grants from Mozilla Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, and the Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, and presented at Oakland Museum of California, Tribeca Film Festival, and the Berlin State Museums.
Moska Rokay (she/her) is an Afghan refugee and settler currently living and working in Toronto as a PhD Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. Her doctoral research project explores the archival needs of diverse Afghan communities in Canada to challenge the archival field towards more community-centered practices for refugee and diasporic communities. She explores these topics through the creation of a digital archival collection of newly recorded oral histories with Afghans in Canada, modelling a digital archive grounded in a feminist care ethics and community engagement to amplify refugee knowledge, lived experiences, and storytelling on their own terms.
Noura Aljizawi (she/her) is the co-founder and chairwoman of Start Point, a survivor-led, community-based organization dedicated to restoring dignity, healing, and justice for those impacted by torture, displacement, and state repression. As a human rights defender and scholar, Noura’s work is grounded in an ethics of care, resistance, and collective liberation, emphasizing trauma-informed, Intersectional, culturally responsive approaches. Noura’s research expertise sits at the intersection of technology, human rights, and global security. She works to advance digital rights for communities targeted by surveillance, censorship, and digital exclusion, while simultaneously investigating transnational repression and digital authoritarianism. Her recent ethnographic work centers on intergenerational oral literature and storytelling as tools for cultural survival and the preservation of collective memory in exile. Her current work explores how technology is being weaponized by perpetrators to erase the victims' digital narratives and how this systemic erasure disrupts the preservation of truth and the pursuit of justice for survivors. Noura holds a Master of Global Affairs from the University of Toronto. She is the recipient of the University’s Excellence Through Innovation Award and the Janice Stein Alumni Leadership Award. Her research has been featured in publications including Democratization, Internet Policy Review, and the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity.
Rama Salahat (she/her) is an AI specialist and Technology Officer at 7amleh. Her work focuses on building decolonial AI, auditing content moderation systems, and challenging power structures embedded in technology. She advocates for inclusive and justice-centered approaches to AI through interdisciplinary research and policy engagement, with the goal of ensuring that emerging technologies respect human rights and amplify underrepresented voices.