New book: International Law and Displaced Archives in Arctic Countries
International Law and Displaced Archives in Arctic Countries, co-edited by Rachael Lorna Johnstone, University of Akureyri and James Lowry, City University of New York, was published in September 2026 (online). The hardback version will be released in October.
Archives exert power, they build narratives, and they influence the destinies of individuals and Peoples. While archival theorists and practitioners have been attuned to the problems of shared, displaced and disputed archives, the issue has been long neglected by international lawyers. In the last four decades, there has been very limited exploration of international law and archives, and none that has focused on the Arctic. This anthology addresses a major gap in the literature and provides the intellectual foundation for further progress on the complex legal, diplomatic, cultural, and technical problems attending displaced archives and their repatriation.
The contributors are: Rachael Lorna Johnstone, James Lowry, Romain Chuffart, Melis Yuksel, Njörður Sigurðsson, Bjarni Már Magnússon, Rebecca Bourgeois, William T D Wadsworth, Thomas D Andrews, Apostolos Tsiouvalas and Giorgio Baruchello.
International Law and Displaced Archives in Arctic Countries is the fifth volume in the Brill Studies in Polar Law Series. The series editors are Timo Koivurova and Guðmundur Alfreðsson.