Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network

Episode: Gabrielle Durepos and Amy Thurlow, "Archival Research in Historical Organisation Studies: Theorising Silences" (Emerald Publishing, 2025)

Date: September 18, 2025

Host: Jen Hoyer

Guests: Gabrielle Durepos (Gabby) & Amy Thurlow

Episode Overview

This episode features a rich conversation with Gabrielle Durepos and Amy Thurlow about their book, Archival Research in Historical Organisation Studies: Theorising Silences. The primary focus is on how archives, far from being neutral repositories, shape historical and organizational narratives by both preserving and omitting stories—creating what the authors call "archival silences." They discuss methodological frameworks for identifying these silences, share case studies from their own archival work, and propose an agenda for more reflexive and inclusive research.

Guest Introductions

Gabrielle Durepos ("Gabby")

• Professor of Business Administration at Mount Saint Vincent University
• Specializes in historical organization studies, especially methodologies for uncovering marginalized populations in organizational histories
• Passion for researching knowledge creation in the cultural heritage sector (galleries, libraries, archives, museums)
• Attracted to how knowledge practices are made explicit in “GLAM” organizations

"I've been long fascinated by methodology... How do populations get marginalized? How is it that we write histories? What are the consequences for today?" [02:37]

Amy Thurlow

• Professor of Communications at Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax
• Background in communication and public relations; focus on critical sense making
• Researches identity construction: why particular organizational narratives are privileged while others are forgotten
• Interested in archival spaces as sites of both preservation and absence

"How come some narratives, some versions of the story stick, for lack of a better word, and others are lost or discounted or are never surfaced?" [04:59]

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Non-Neutrality of Archives

• Archives are often perceived as neutral; in reality, they're shaped by human decisions about what is worthy of preservation.
• The book challenges the myth: "If it's not in the archive, it didn't happen," debunking the view that the absence of a record means absence of reality.

"They're absolute imperfect reflections of society. But I think there was a prevalence that if it's not in the archive, it didn't happen. And so I think that was one of the first myths we were trying to debunk."
— Gabby [09:36]

Types of Archives & Silences

• Archives can be physical (material collections) or more broadly conceived (all societal knowledge at a moment in time).
• Silences arise from:
  • Decisions made about what to collect or destroy (capacity, cultural values, secrecy)
  • Practical issues (damage, lost context, budget, space)
  • Lack of documentation, especially for marginalized groups (Indigenous, women, laborers)
  • Limitations of digital archives (loss of sensory context, reliance on technological design choices)

"When you start making the list, you get surprised that there are actually archives to begin with because the silences and archives are... created at various moments..."
— Gabby [21:29]

"It's not the intentionality, like, it's not an intentional silencing. It's a product of a series of decisions that were made based on... multiple factors of the time."
— Amy [25:09]

Sensory & Aesthetic Losses

• Digital archives, while broadening access, may reduce or erase physical context—scent, touch, margin notes, etc.—that contribute to sense making.
• Example: Records from a cholera epidemic smelling of vinegar—a sensory cue lost in digitization [26:45].

Frameworks for Theorizing Archival Silences

1. Five Moments Framework [29:14]

• Developed by the authors as a tool for reflexivity, to help researchers identify where silences enter the historical record.

• Five Moments:

  1. Creation of Source: How and by whom documents are produced
  2. Archival Gathering: Decisions about what is collected or preserved
  3. Collecting Archival Sources: Challenges and decisions during accumulation
  4. Historical Writing: Researchers' own selections and narrative choices
  5. Professional Construction: How the profession itself shapes what's valued, remembered, or forgotten

• At each stage, key questions include:

  • Who is present/represented/missing?
  • Which social categories are included?
  • What systems of inequity are visible?
  • Who benefits/is marginalized by the narrative?

• Case Study: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)

  • Chronicled lack of original records documenting Indigenous experiences in residential schools
  • Even survivor testimonies were impacted by trauma and cultural values around silence
  • Bureaucratic, legal, and practical hurdles impeded collection and sharing of documents

"[The Five Moments Framework] was developed as one possible way to understand how silences are perpetuated... at each stage, ask: who is in the document, who is not, and why?"
— Gabby [29:14]

2. Critical Sense Making Framework [42:58]

• Built on Karl Weick’s work, this framework underscores that meaning in archives is always subjectively produced.

• Recognizes that interaction with digital archives is mediated by technological choices—but always derived from human decisions.

• Sense making is influenced by:

  • Identity construction
  • Plausibility rather than accuracy
  • Selective attention to cues
  • Retrospective interpretation
  • Social and power dynamics

• Implication for digital archives: Researchers must remain aware that behind a seemingly neutral digital interface are countless subjective choices about design, classification, access, and search functionality.

• Example:

  • Keyword-based searches in digital archives can isolate narratives, omitting serendipitous discoveries that physical browsing used to allow.

"We tend to look at digital archives as somehow less subjective... so we thought critical sense making might be a good foil... all these processes happen whenever we face something that's out of the routine."
— Amy [42:58]

A Five-Point Agenda for Archival Researchers [52:39]

1. Promote Reflexivity:
   Researchers must recognize and account for their own perspectives, assumptions, and impacts on the historical record.

   "Gone are the days where we suggest that gone should be the days where researchers offer a neutral, sort of God's view perspective."
   — Gabby [53:01]

2. Explore Archives Beyond Walls:
   Investigate and recognize societal archives beyond traditional collections.

3. Aesthetics and Sensory Research:
   Acknowledge the critical role of non-textual, sensory dimensions in understanding and reconstructing silenced histories.

4. Use Intersectional Lens:
   Always contextualize archival materials and research within intersecting identities and power structures (gender, class, race, age, etc.).

   "[Taking] an intersectional lens to archives... needs to influence everything from physical structure to the interface to the design to everything, including what’s preserved and what’s discarded."
   — Amy [58:13]

5. Decolonize Business Curriculum:
   Challenge dominant narratives in business education by interrogating which histories are preserved and why; consider the colonial roots and current power structures shaping knowledge.

   "It's not that archives are sort of behind this closed door... it informs and it propels... decolonizing the business curriculum... relies on information that's preserved in archives."
   — Amy [59:16]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Anytime we include details about that, we exclude a bunch of details. And we were interested in the exclusion in this book."
  — Gabby [12:51]

• "In order to understand the choices you're making [as an archivist], you have to answer the question: what's most important? And that question itself is subjective."
  — Amy [27:48]

• "I was in an archive and there was a piece of Scotch tape on a paper and it fell off and so did the letters behind it. So I couldn't read the document."
  — Gabby [21:37]

Case Examples

• Pan American Airways Archive: Documentation provided highly gendered representations—men as competent, women as beautiful—reflecting workplace and social silences of the era [11:37].
• Railroad Archives: Official records focus on innovation and nation-building; the experiences of Indigenous people and laborers are largely missing and must be pieced together from scattered, often marginalized sources [15:09].
• Canadian Residential School Documents: The TRC’s work evidences how silences are both a result of what was never documented and later practical barriers to accessing and collecting what does remain [33:12].

What’s Next for the Authors?

• Gabby: Researching the organizational history of the Nova Scotia Museum, focusing on how industrial histories and silences around women’s roles are constructed.

  "Here I am now sifting through mountains of documents and looking at notes in the margins and looking for stories... I'm working on this organizational history of Nova Scotia and I was doing the chapter on mills... all they can find... is they were looking for girls who worked like a man..." [63:02]

• Amy: Editing a research handbook on organizational sense making, bringing together global perspectives and applications of the theory.

Conclusion

The episode provides a thoughtful, practical exploration of how archives shape organizational knowledge, the persistent challenge of archival silences, and methodologies for surfacing what is absent or repressed. Durepos and Thurlow’s frameworks and agenda call for a more thoughtful, interdisciplinary, and inclusive approach to archival research—one that recognizes both the power and the limitations of the stories we inherit.