The Reanimating Data Project

The Reanimating Data Project (2018-2020) – RAD - is a collaboration between academics, archivists and activists interested in young women’s sexual health and empowerment. We are working with a set of interviews collected as part of a feminist social research study conducted in Manchester and London in 1988-90: the Women, Risk & AIDS project (WRAP). Our aim is to archive, share and reanimate this material as way of exploring change and continuities in intimate lives over a 30 year period.

The RAD project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and involves the Universities of Sussex and Edinburgh and the community archive Feminist Webs. The RAD project team includes (at the University of Sussex) Rachel Thomson, Sharon Webb, Ester McGeeney and Rosie Gahnstrom (at the University of Edinburgh) Niamh Moore (and at Feminist Webs) Alison Ronan and Niamh Moore (again). Rachel Thomson was also part of the original WRAP project team in 1988/9.

This collection contains project documentation, objects and items related to the different reanimation experiments conducted in 2019/20 (such as workshops with various youth and community groups and a sound installation). It also includes interviews with the original Women, Risk and Aids Project research team (Janet Holland, Sue Sharpe and Rachel Thomson) which were also conducted in 2019/20.