Tuesday 28 October marks the official launch of the International Archives Congress – ICA Barcelona 2025, a day especially rich in content, with sessions bringing together historical memory, human rights and artificial intelligence, as well as the official opening of the event with the presence of representatives from the International Council on Archives (ICA) and local authorities.
A morning full of ideas and debate
From the very start of the day, parallel sessions will present a wide range of experiences: from archives as a tool for reparation in Colombia, to digital preservation initiatives in conflict contexts such as Ukraine and Sudan. Also featured will be projects bridging the local and the global, such as the archives of the Sahrawi people, the recovery of Barcelona’s social history, or the conservation of oral memories in Malaysia.
Artificial intelligence will be one of the main features of the day, with proposals highlighting its potential to automate descriptions, enrich metadata and transform access to archival collections. This will be an excellent opportunity to see how technology can become an ally for archive professionals, while keeping in view the ethical and human challenges it entails.
Official opening ceremony
At midday, the official opening ceremony of the Congress will take place, followed by a keynote speech by Mercè Crosas, a renowned scientist and technologist specialising in data science and information management, and Director of the Social Sciences and Computational Humanities programme at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS). Her address will set the tone for the days to follow. This symbolic moment of meeting and opening will bring together representatives of the organising institutions and local political authorities.
In the afternoon, the programme will continue with sessions addressing the right to know versus the right to be forgotten, democratic memory policies, institutional transparency and new methodologies in documentary work.
You can consult each of the presentations and activities scheduled for this day in the preliminary programme, already available on the official International Archives Congress – ICA Barcelona 2025 website.
