![[UPCOMING] Archival Pace: Bureaucratic Orders, Silences, and Critical Archival Practices in Documenting Public Works and Labour in Africa](https://archlabour.iscte-iul.pt/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/AMU8748.3_3-foto2.jpg)
Panel
Archival Pace: Bureaucratic Orders, Silences, and Critical Archival Practices in Documenting Public Works and Labour in Africa
Event: Archival Education and Research Initiative (AERI) 2026 Conference
Panel Chairs: Filipa Lopes; Sónia Pereira Henrique
Authors: Filipa Lopes; Sónia Pereira Henrique; Ana Vaz Milheiro; Francesca Vita; Beatriz Serrazina; Inês Lima Rodrigues; Fernando Pires
Date: 20-24 July 2026
Location: University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC
Summary
This panel, comprising members of the interdisciplinary team of the ERC ArchLabour project, adopts the concept of archival pace as a guiding lens for understanding historical archives inherited from the Portuguese colonial administration in Africa. By combining critical analysis of these archives with interdisciplinary approaches, from archival description practices to oral histories, the panel argues that grasping labour in public works requires a dual movement: recognising the limits imposed by colonial and postcolonial bureaucracies and archives and finding ways to make visible practices and experiences they silenced, particularly those of workers.
First, Milheiro and Vita explore how waged workers are represented in the records, thereby discussing simultaneously the presence and agency of women in colonial public works (PW), a presence often obscured by interpretative frameworks embedded in records and archival description practices. Serrazina examines the Diamang archive, using the company’s extractive activities in Angola as evidence of socio-spatial control and labour discipline, and as a documentary technology that simultaneously produced categories, silenced resistance, shaping both landscapes and labour.
Henrique, drawing on her background working at the Portuguese Overseas Historical Archive, elaborates on how different rhythms and practices in PW and labour records affect access to information, interrogating how archival authority is constructed. Lopes and Pires address how archival description, or its absence, in the archives of Cabo Verde shapes access to information and memory on PW, proposing collaborative indexing and metadata strategies that render overlooked workers and dynamics visible.
Finally, Rodrigues analyses housing and public works records, tracing bureaucratic and technical rhythms shaped by control and standardisation, and advancing slow-archive approaches grounded in oral histories to reinforce memory and inform architectural practice. Together, the panel conceptualises the archive as a contested field where interdisciplinary collaboration can address archival asymmetries and foreground overlooked dimensions of construction and labour.
Communications in this panel
Ana Vaz Milheiro and Francesca Vita, Women, Labour and Visibility in Colonial Public Works Records
Beatriz Serrazina, The Diamang Archive as Corporate Technology: Categories, Absences and Socio-Spatial Control
Sónia Pereira Henrique, Slowly Seeking Authority: Content and Use of Public Works Records at the Portuguese Overseas Historical Archive
Filipa Lopes and Fernando Pires, Between Silences and Labyrinths: Contributions to Improving Access to Information and Memory on Labour and Public Works in Cabo Verde’s Archives
Inês Lima Rodrigues, Colonial and Postcolonial Housing and Public Works: Archival Rhythms, Silences and Unarchiving
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Click here for the full programme.
[Cover image] Building of the Directorate‑General of Public Works Services, Lourenço Marques (Mozambique). In Relatório do Governador Geral de Moçambique (1940-1942), ID AMU08748.3, AHU, cx. 3/1726.1. Courtesy of the PT, AHU.
