The University of Liverpool’s Dr Alexandrina (Alex) Buchanan has been appointed the next President of the Archives and Records Association of the UK and Ireland (ARA).
She will succeed ARA’s current president Caroline Williams following the annual ARA conference, which this year takes place in Dublin from 26-28 August.
Alex is an archivist and archival educator. Since 2007, she has taught at the University, where she is Senior Lecturer in Archive Studies, Director of the Masters in Archives and Records Management programme and Co-Director of the Liverpool University Centre for Archive Studies.
She is also Chair of the Forum for Archives and Records Management Education and Research (FARMER), which represents those universities in the UK and the Republic of Ireland offering ARA-accredited record-keeping programmes.
After completing a PhD in Architectural History, Alex undertook cataloguing projects at the Royal Institute of British Architects and Cambridge University Library. This experience, along with time in hospital records management between her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, and a year as Archives Assistant at the Borthwick Institute, encouraged her to train as a record-keeper at University College London.
She then worked at Lambeth Palace Library, where she contributed to the cataloguing of the papers of Archbishop Ramsey and the HLF-funded digitisation of the Incorporated Church Building Society archive. In 2002, she became archivist to The Clothworkers’ Company, one of the ‘Great Twelve’ livery companies of the City of London.
Alex is a former editor of Archives and Records and is committed both to maintaining mutually-beneficial links between academia and the profession and to raising public awareness of the value of records and archives.
On her appointment as ARA President, Alex said: “I am delighted and honoured to have been chosen as the next President of the Archives and Records Association. I look forward to continuing the important work of my predecessor, Caroline Williams, in advocating for the sector, encouraging new initiatives and celebrating its achievements.”
David Mander, ARA’s Chair, said: “Caroline Williams has been an outstanding ambassador for ARA, its members and the archive, curatorial and record-keeping sector. In Alex Buchanan, we have both a very worthy successor and someone at the forefront of promoting the sector in academia and the voluntary, public and private sectors.”