Michelle Caswell

CTL-E-6350 · Person · scholar · contemporary

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07536 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6350.

Michelle Caswell is an archival scholar at the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA lists her as "a Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies" and affiliated faculty in Asian American Studies. In 2008, "together with Samip Mallick, Caswell co-founded the South Asian American Digital Archive, an online repository that documents and provides access to the stories of South Asian Americans." She directs the UCLA Community Archives Lab, which studies how "independent, identity-based memory organizations document, shape, and provide access to the histories of minoritized communities." She is the author of Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work (Routledge, 2021). Her work has defined concepts in critical archival studies including community archives, imagined records, symbolic annihilation, radical empathy and feminist standpoint appraisal, including work with Marika Cifor on radical empathy in archives.

Notes

STAGING: temp id EB-06. FLAG — CHAIR CLAIM NOT VERIFIED AS CURRENT: UCLA EVCP documents interim chair 2021–22; an undated SEIS news item says she was 'recently appointed chair'; her current faculty page lists only Professor + Affiliated Faculty. The chair role is therefore carried as dated/historical in the sources, NOT asserted as current in the description. CURATOR'S JUDGMENT (DRAFT): Caswell is the packet's archival-theory anchor on the West Coast — the community-archives line that the South Side Home Movie Project (EB-14) practices in Chicago.

Relationships

• University of California, Los Angeles — affiliated with
  Caswell is Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA (live record CTL-E-4176, School), per her UCLA faculty page.

Referenced by

• Archival silence — related to → this record

Sources

• UCLA SEIS faculty page (accessed 2026-10-29): 'Michelle Caswell, Ph.D., is a Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.'; 'In 2008, together with Samip Mallick, Caswell co-founded the South Asian American Digital Archive, an online repository that documents and provides access to the stories of South Asian Americans. She is the author of the books, Urgent Archives: Enacting Liberatory Memory Work (Routledge Press, 2021)'; publication list: 'Caswell, Michelle and Marika Cifor. "From Human Rights to Feminist Ethics: Radical Empathy in Archives." Archivaria 81 (Spring 2016): 23-43.' NOTE: the same page's publications list dates Urgent Archives '(Routledge Press, January 2023)' — an internal UCLA inconsistency; 2021 is used here per the page's bio text and Routledge-derived descriptions. (primary source · build store)
• UCLA EVCP announcement (accessed 2026-10-29): 'She served as interim chair of the information studies department from 2021–22.'; 'In 2008, she co-founded the South Asian American Digital Archive, an online repository that documents and provides access to the stories of South Asian Americans.' (primary source · build store)
• CLIR symposium bio (accessed 2026-10-29): 'Her work has defined and refined core concepts in critical archival studies, including archival imaginaries, community archives, imagined records, symbolic annihilation, radical empathy, survivorcentered archives, and feminist standpoint appraisal.' (build store)
• UCLA SEIS news (accessed 2026-10-29): 'Caswell, who has been recently appointed chair of the UCLA Department of Information Studies, observes that the field of archival studies is now in "a transformative period."' (primary source · build store)

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Record CTL-E-6350 · Combined Graph record U-07536 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 2 mapped relationships.
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