Archival Research Processes: A Case for Material Methods

Abstract

This article argues for a framework of material methods, a forefronted material-rhetorical approach to archival research, applying material-methodological heuristics of rhetorical accretion and proximity. The article offers an extended example of archival research undertaken at the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). Such heuristic content generated by a material approach is valuable in two ways. First, it offers readable layers of rhetorical accretion that deserve examination and analysis as separate texts in order to make meaning of research processes. Second, such content makes archival methods more transparent while resisting an untroubled narrative arc of our stories of research.

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