Archival encounters: troubling material and the historical geographies of workplace violence

This paper reflects on the archival encounter. In our discussion, we consider interactions between researchers and more troubling and violent materials, specifically industrial death and injury, held within archives. We contribute to ongoing methodological thought within historical geography by drawing on literature relating to archival encounters, fragments, and labour injustice as a means to unpack archival interactions. We specifically consider the encounter with troubling material and the ambiguities of analysing it. Our archival reflections draw on two of our own archival research encounters with historical industrial settings. These are from two different archives and are broadly framed around workplace violence. The first is from the early twentieth-century British Coalfields, while the second is situated within the crisis of unemployment in Britain in the 1980s. We highlight our experiences in encountering troubling materials and some of reflexive commentary on how we navigated the material. Although the material we encountered did not sit completely comfortably within the broader scope of our research, it stood out in such a way that we felt it warranted acknowledgement but we encountered ethical and analytical dilemmas in doing so.