Fragile by Default: Thinking About Digital Preservation in Research

Delivered by: Adam Harwood and Duncan Harrison

Digital preservation affects all of us with a digital life even if we don’t always realise it. The requirements faced by researchers to preserve their data contrast with the digital life most of us lead. Files rarely disappear all at once, but instead become inaccessible as platforms change or close, or data is quietly managed on our behalf by clouds, apps and services such as Google, social media platforms, and YouTube.

This session offers an introduction to digital preservation for researchers working with digital materials. Participants will learn how digital objects can change or become vulnerable over time and how to introduce some simple preservation-minded workflows into everyday research practices.

These ideas will be explored in a number of contemporary case studies covering social media, environmental and political contexts helping participants to reflect on how digital preservation challenges relate to their own research and digital lives.

This will be an informal session with no previous knowledge of digital preservation, data stewardship or digital archives necessary to take part. The session is intended to be discursive and interactive, so please feel free to come with your own talking points!

The workshop is open to Sussex researchers at all levels – please register using your @sussex.ac.uk email address. Refreshments will be provided.

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This workshop is part of The Digital Methods Accelerator (DMA) programme 2025-26, a series of in-person workshops aimed at Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities researchers at all levels wanting to explore and skill up on digital methods for their research.