Dr. Asheesh Kapur Siddique, assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, will speak on his recent book, The Archive of Empire: Knowledge, Conquest, and the Making of the Early Modern British World (Yale University Press, 2024). Dr. James Lowry, Director of the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Queens College, will moderate the ensuing discussion.

The Archive of Empire explores how the modern data-driven government emerged from the information order of the early modern state. The central role of archives in the creation of the British Empire in the 17^th and 18^th centuries is examined as well as the how cultural encounters changed the relationship between power and information.

Dr. Siddique obtained his Ph. D. from Columbia University in 2016 and a master’s in philosophy from the University of Oxford in 2009. His areas of specialty are: early America; the Atlantic world; the British Empire; early modern Europe; the history of the book and the history of media; political history; legal history; and the history of political thought. His research and pedagogy focuses on the role of collecting, managing and using knowledge in the history of state formation and governance. He has taught courses in: the American Revolution; early American thought and culture; the early modern British Empire; the making of American capitalism from 1492 to the present; the early modern Atlantic world; the history of the corporation; and the history of data.

Dr. Lowry obtained his Ph. D. from University College London in 2019 and his Master of Information Management (Archives and Record Keeping) from Curtin University in Australia in 2006. He is an honorary research fellow and former co-director of the Centre for Archive Studies at the University of Liverpool, where he also taught. He joined the Queens College faculty in 2020 and is the founder and director of the Archival Technologies Lab there. His research focuses on information and governance, in particular during the colonial and post-colonial periods as well as in diasporic contexts.

The event will be held in the William P. Kelly Skylight Room (9^th floor) on Friday, May 9, 12-2. Lunch will be served.

This is a yearly event held by the Mina Rees Library’s Friends of the Library. This year’s event is co-sponsored by the History Program and the Center for the Humanities.

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