James Lowry

Faculty Fellow

James Lowry is a Professor at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the Ellen Libretto and Adam Conrad Endowed Chair in Information Studies and the founder and director of the Archival Technologies Lab. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at University College London and the University of Liverpool, where he was co-director of the Centre for Archive Studies. With Dr. Sumayya Ahmed, he co-edits the Routledge Studies in Archives book series. His research is concerned with information and governance, particularly in international, colonial, and post-colonial contexts, and his current project, Tactical Recordkeeping, explores the ethical, technical, and theoretical problems connected with autonomous weapons systems, archival authenticity, and international jurisprudence.

Participating Years

2026–2027

Radical Imagination: Temporalities and Geographies of Struggle

In a world of deepening crises, of socioeconomic inequities, of environmental collapse, of resurgent fascism and institutionalized authoritarianism, what is the place of radical imagination in creating more just worlds? While some think of the work of imagination as being outside of—at a distance to, or even in a different temporality than—everyday struggle, we want to shine a light on the work of radical practice as a form of imagination. We look to anticapitalist and antiracist organizing and thought, and the complex practices in time and place through which change is not only presented and represented but produced.